March 21–28, 2002
opera| review
Gio Metro
Don Giovanni
March 22, 24, 26, 30, Opera Company of Philadelphia, Academy of Music, Broad and Locust sts., 215-732-8400
Mozart’s superb music gets soundly treated by a capable cast, but you’ll probably come away from OCP’s worthwhile new Don Giovanni recalling designer Rafal Olbinski’s extraordinary set of images. Largely projections on a back scrim (with some augmenting set pieces), they blend Magritte-like surrealism with an early-Italian Renaissance palette and neoclassical forms. The noiseless custom Bugatti (Don Giovanni’s seduction mobile, driven by servant Leporello) also exerts its appeal.
Director Robert Driver imagined a "1930s movie epic" Don Giovanni (why, then, a TV?), managing to make the class and gender relations work pretty well in that aesthetic. Costumer Richard St. Clair had a field day running up Gosford Park-ready attire for all concerned, especially for the glamorous offstage couple David Pittsinger (Giovanni) and Patricia Schuman (Elvira), who, with Richard Bernstein’s Leporello, most capture Driver’s attention. The show is diverting throughout, if rarely moving (except on sheerly musical grounds).
Driver has a weakness for gratuitous animals on stage (Bernstein’s cute terrier Cocoa Bean upstages Schuman’s entrance) and visual "surprise endings" — there are two that I won’t divulge. The main one, dealing with Giovanni’s punishment, seems to have no relation to what precedes it and to follow no internal logic. The other surprise is pretty cool, but could use a few more motivating looks or gestures by the characters involved.
Giovanni, smooth, but here clearly a substance abuser, suits the smoldering Pittsinger; generally the cultivated bass sings beautifully, especially the serenade. A few high-flying Giovanni phrases get reassigned to Bernstein, who’s vocally solid and showily broad as usual. Soprano Schuman, a distinguished actress and musician, makes the best of a voice diminished in beauty of timbre by the move up from mezzo; she still can produce some ravishing sounds. Christine Brandes’ dead-on attacks and finely chiseled phrasing grace the peasant Zerlina. As the grandly aristocratic Anna, Wendy Nielsen sounds like she possesses the needed vocal goods, but excessive tremolo gets in the way, especially on top. Jeremy Ovenden sings her hapless fiancé Ottavio with fine style in a narrow but beautifully floated (and very British) tenor. Ottavio throwing Giovanni a punch works for me.
Conductor Corrado Rovaris holds the orchestra together solidly (apart from persistent waywardness by the horns) and conducts with welcome dispatch; he seemingly left appoggiaturas (the expected harmonic variations of repeated notes) and decoration to the individual singers, a somewhat old-fashioned approach. Brandes and Ovenden prove the most creative in this regard.
Who keeps the Bugatti?
