An extraordinary Don Giovanni uplifts a messy ‘Don Giovanni’
By rights, Boston Baroque’s production of “Don Giovanni” should be remembered for the performance of American baritone Sidney Outlaw, who made an extraordinary role debut as the title character.
Let it be known: The man can sing the part, and not in the sense that many baritones do, when they make up for rough vocal patches in the technically challenging champagne aria and “Deh, vieni alla finestra” with charisma. Musicality and magnetism were equally at his command. I’ve seen several Dons both live and on screen, and this is the first time I’ve felt personally seduced.
Outlaw’s performance this past weekend was even more impressive in light of all the things that went wrong in Boston Baroque’s modern production: baffling staging, shaggy conducting, and significant technical glitches, including the surtitles system crashing several times. Boston Baroque has doubled down on its commitment to semistaged opera in recent years, with somewhat patchy results; this one stuck the landing on the casting, but everything else should send the team back to the drawing board.
Stage director Chuck Hudson set the action in the present day, with Don Giovanni as a well-known entertainer in a “modern city with a historical background.” (Ahem.) Familiar nighttime cityscapes were projected on a screen at the rear of the stage, many of them including fake advertisements for the Don’s latest single. In place of the original’s class-based drama of peasants and gentry, Hudson inserted a halfhearted critique of celebrity culture, which manifested in the chorus carrying smartphones, selfies splashed on the projection screen, and awkward modernizations in the English surtitles.
When the Don attempts to seduce the peasant bride Zerlina, he usually dismisses her suspicious groom with the reassurance that she’s in the hands of a nobleman, with all the upright morals that noblesse oblige implies. “Zerlina is in the hands of a celebrity” is hardly the same, unless Hudson means to imply that celebrities are known for unimpeachable behavior. There are many ways to modernize the “Don,” but at the end of the night, it felt less like a modernization and more a way to justify buying costumes off the rack. (Leporello’s leather jacket and Hawaiian shirt combination was inspired; Donna Elvira’s burgundy dress and heavy jewelry just looked tired.)
The orchestra, with music director Martin Pearlman conducting, was placed at the center of the stage. The dramatic action mostly took place in front of the ensemble, with characters occasionally appearing on a low catwalk that ran between the rear of the orchestra and the projection screen. This worked fine for dramatic visual effect, but not vocal, as the Huntington is very good at eating sound. Bass-baritone Kevin Deas, whom I’ve heard sing a “The Trumpet will Sound” that could wake the dead, made two lukewarm entrances on that catwalk as the Commendatore. If you can’t be heard over the orchestra, how are you going to make the Don quake in his gold sneakers before you drag him to hell?
Bass-baritone Patrick Carfizzi was an excellent Leporello, clowning with Julie Boulianne’s world-weary Donna Elvira during the catalogue aria and stealing scenes back and forth with Outlaw’s Don. Soprano Maya Kherani was a delightfully doe-eyed Zerlina opposite David McFerrin’s Masetto. Someone give her a lead role in this town already.
Tenor Nicholas Phan did what he could with the thankless role of Don Ottavio, contributing a tender “Il mio tesoro” as well as strong presence in ensemble scenes. Susanna Phillips as Donna Anna hit a vocal pothole in Act 2, recovering in time for the finale but not for the character’s most important aria. Pearlman’s uneven conducting did little to help; several times, singers struggled to stay with the music.
I would pay money to see Outlaw’s Don again; I would pay even more to see him opposite Carfizzi’s Leporello again, in a production that let its singers shine.