Photograph: Mihaela Bodlovic
In omitting the ultimate sextet, the Royal Opera Home’s opening-night manufacturing of Don Giovanni opts for an ambiguous ending reasonably than a didactic staging of the well-known seducer’s descent to hell. This method largely labored due to the convincing stage presence of Canadian baritone Gordon Bintner within the title position.
The present revival of Kasper Holten’s 2014 manufacturing additionally largely sidesteps any potential problems with sexual violence. Right here, Donna Anna (Rachel Willis-Sørensen) shouldn’t be a sufferer however a keen participant whose consensual tryst with Don Giovanni at first of the opera is repeated throughout Don Ottavio’s (Bogdan Volkov) “Dalla sua tempo.” Sly and retributive, Willis-Sørensen leaned right into a Donna Anna who alternates between her need for Don Giovanni and her professed devotion to Don Ottavio. Her loyalty to her father, the Commendatore (Andreas Bauer Kanabas), nevertheless, fails to intelligibly register on this manufacturing. Willis-Sørensen’s “Or sai chi l’onore” and “Non mi dir” have been each dramatically compelling, though her higher register often misplaced its common brilliance.
The Holten manufacturing depends closely on digital scenography, leaving little for these hoping for a extra tactile brush with Mozart. I discovered my common prejudice towards this medium dissipate below Luke Halls’s measured video design and set designer Es Devlin’s rotating labyrinth set. The design rests on projections of ink forming names, presumably these from Don Giovanni’s little black guide, because the ink spreads throughout the stage, finally leaping from the digital realm onto the clothes of the ladies with whom he has been concerned. Because the ink stains permeate the clothes of Donna Anna and Donna Elvira (Aigul Akhmetshina), Zerlina’s (Giulia Semenzato) stark white bridal robe units her aside as a extra elusive determine. With a radiant bell-like soprano, Semenzato performs a precocious and unconventionally assertive Zerlina, who shrewdly tears open her personal robe in the course of the Act I finale.
Photograph: Mihaela Bodlovic
In opposition to these complicit and manipulative girls emerges a chaotic Don Giovanni, whose more and more fractured expertise of actuality finds its visible analogue within the kaleidoscope video projection accompanying “Fin ch’han dal vino.” Regardless of the manufacturing’s visible extra that might have simply drowned out his sound, Binter introduced the anchored, velvety vocal presence one hopes for in a Mozartian baritone.
Each technically and theatrically, Binter and Roberto Tagliavini (Leporello) dominated the manufacturing. Tagliavini possesses an enviable expertise for comedian timing and patter, cementing the 2 as a formidable duo. Akhmetshina was at her vocal finest in “Mi tradi quell’alma ingrata.” Total, conductor Stefano Montanari delivered a sprightly studying of the rating, though at instances the stability between the pit and stage threatened to overpower the singers.
Operas depicting sexual violence are sometimes touted as related or as alternatives for modern ethical reckonings, however Holten’s Don Giovanni is one with out an instruction handbook. Facet by facet, Donna Anna the keen participant and Zerlina the manipulator of her personal circumstances increase extra questions consent than they reply. With out the standard closing sextet, there’s additionally much less sense of ethical decision; Donna Elvira doesn’t be a part of a convent, Donna Anna and Don Ottavio don’t set a future marriage ceremony date, and Zerlina and Masetto don’t return to marital bliss. What stays, nevertheless, is Don Giovanni’s descent to hell. A lot of the energy of this manufacturing lies in its refusal to resolve the fates of the opposite characters, permitting problems with violence and company to linger past Giovanni’s punishment.
