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| W. A. Mozart / Lorenzo Da Ponte: Don Giovanni. The Metropolitan Opera, New York, 2023, P: Ivo van Hove. In the beginning there is Vatermord. Donna Anna and Don Ottavio witness in shock the death throes of the Commandatore, Anna's father. The shock waves of the primal act of violence reverberate through the tragedy until the last supper, where the dead father, reincarnated as the Stone Guest, consigns Don Giovanni, his murderer, to Hell. Photos: The Metropolitan Opera. Please do click on them to enlarge them. |
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| W. A. Mozart / Lorenzo Da Ponte: Don Giovanni. The Metropolitan Opera, New York, 2023, P: Ivo van Hove. Don Giovanni and the three masked avengers at the end of Act I. |
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| W. A. Mozart / Lorenzo Da Ponte: Don Giovanni. The Metropolitan Opera, New York, 2023, P: Ivo van Hove. |
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| W. A. Mozart / Lorenzo Da Ponte: Don Giovanni. The Metropolitan Opera, New York, 2023. Peter Mattei as Don Giovanni. |
Il dissoluto punito ossia Il Don Giovanni / Der bestrafte Wüstling oder Don Giovanni. KV 527.
AT 1798. Dramma giocoso. Composer: W. A. Mozart. Libretto: Lorenzo Da Ponte – based on: Giovanni Bertati: Don Giovanni Tenorio. Original in Italian. Premiere: 29 Oct 1787, Prague: Gräflich Nostitsches Nationaltheater (today: Ständetheater). Duration: 165 min
The action takes place in Sevilla in the 17th or 18th century.
Cast:
Donna Anna, die Tochter des Commandatore und Braut von Don Ottavio (soprano) / Federica Lombardi
Donna Elvira, vornehme Dame aus Burgos, Don Giovannis verlassene Geliebte (soprano) / Ana María Martínez
Zerlina, die Braut von Masetto, eine Bäuerin (soprano or mezzosoprano) / Ying Fang
Don Ottavio, der Verlobte von Donna Anna (tenor) / Ben Bliss
Don Giovanni, ein ausschweifender junger Edelmann (barytone) / Peter Mattei
Leporello, Don Giovannis Diener (bass) / Adam Plachetka
Masetto, ein Bauer, Bräutigam der Zerlina (bass) / Alfred Walker
Il Commendatore (Der Komtur) / Der steinerne Gast (bass) / Alexander Tsymbalyuk
contadini, contadine, servitori, suonatori (chorus)
A co-production of the Metropolitan Opera and Opéra National de Paris.
Conductor: Nathalie Stutzmann
Producer: Ivo van Hove
Production and lighting design: Jan Versweyveld
Costume design: Christopher Ash
Choreography: Sara Erde
Live in HD director: Gary Halvorson
Live in HD presenter: Erin Morley
Duration announced: 3h 15 min - 3h 35 min (allowing flexibility of opening commentary and intermission). The presentation started at 18.00 and ended at 21.30 (3h 30 min with an intermission, opening speeches and closing credits.
English subtitles.
Recording from The Metropolitan Opera, New York, 20 May 2023.
Viewed at Finnkino Strand 3, Iso Kristiina, Lappeenranta, 23 May 2023.
AA: I am not an opera-goer, but in a parallel life I would love nothing more. I see today for the first time a full-length performance of Don Giovanni which is familiar to me only as a music listener and from Joseph Losey's film adaptation.
Unlike Ingmar Bergman in The Magic Flute, Losey decided to open up the opera on real locations, which does not work for me. The Mozart / Da Ponte piece was conceived as music theatre and in my opinion is best kept that way, even in film adaptation keeping a "filmed theatre" approach like Bergman did with The Magic Flute.
The co-production of the Opéra National de Paris and The Metropolitan Opera of New York is a magnificent achievement, perfection in all departments, conveyed beautifully in the "live in HD" presentation from three days ago.
The Paris leg of the show opened in 2019, and the New York production was scheduled to open right after, but because of the 2019 global Covid pandemic, the opening at the Met was postponed until now. The production is the same, but the casting and the musicians are different.
Don Giovanni belongs to the Mozart / Da Ponte trilogy of operas "before the Revolution": Le nozze di Figaro (1786), Don Giovanni (1787) and Così fan tutte (1789/1790), the last of which was actually premiering during the Revolution.
Don Giovanni / Don Juan is a character well-known in European fiction at least since Mannerism, the earliest notable dramatization being Tirso de Molina's play (1630), followed by Molière, Goldoni, Zorrilla, Byron, Hoffmann, Pushkin and many others. In many versions, in the beginning, Don Juan kills Doña Ana's father, whose grave marker, "the stone guest", he meets at his last supper before being sent to Hell.
The protagonist's name has become a watchword, Don Juanism meaning the male desire for a maximal number of women, immortalized in Leporello's "catalogue aria".
The 2019 / 2023 approach to the opera is Me Too. This is Don Giovanni as Donald Trump. Don Giovanni as a hitman. Don Giovanni as James Bond. Don Giovanni from Pulp Fiction. He defies Death. He can commit murder or a brutal assault in cold blood.
Don Giovanni is a predator, so virile, fearless and determined that everyone else seems paralyzed. In a scene in the end of Act 1 Don Giovanni is directly menaced by all, yet walks away scot free. Don Ottavio fails to stand up to him and therefore loses the love of Donna Anna. Masetto is stronger, yet ends up brutally beaten, which undermines Zerlina's love.
The sexual mystery is not simplified or trivialized. The women are horrified yet also aroused and attracted. The encounter with Don Giovanni is something even more disturbing that being abused, harassed or worse. Don Giovanni's animal alpha male charisma shakes women down to the roots.
Reportedly Giacomo Casanova visited the premiere of Don Giovanni in Prague, but in case he did, he did not discover a mirror image of himself on the stage. Casanova claimed interest only in women he loved. Don Juan is insatiably interested in all women, young and old, blondes and brunettes, all sizes, nations and walks of life. Love is not an issue.
Don Juan is indifferent to love, but he cannot live without women, they are like air and water to him, essential Lebensmittel for conspicuous consumption. Don Juan's way with women is nearer to hate than love. Classically, Don Juan has been seen as a narcissist, but his approach is nearer to self-hate than self-love.
In the age of Tinder, women are as likely to have multiple partners as men, and that was probably so also in Mozart's time ("così fan tutte").
Don Giovanni is being played in modern dress. Modern dress for classic plays has been the norm all my lifetime, a tired convention already when I started to see classics as a child. In the middle of the first modern-dress performance I saw (The Merry Wives of Windsor, Finnish National Theatre, 1967) I registered Tauno Palo as Falstaff (another bigger-than-life Mannerist figure like Don Giovanni) winking and smiling in resignation: "please bear with us, I don't like this any more than you do". It is a bit of a case of underestimating the audience that we are not trusted to get the topical relevance of the play without pretending that it is happening today. And yet, importantly, but this is not an issue for a Don Giovanni performance: women of today are not like the women of Rococo Austria or Renaissance Spain.
But there are men today like Don Giovanni played by Peter Mattei. There is a complexity and a determination in him that is convincing. He keeps his poker face in the most amazing situations of danger and bluff. He has seen it all and seems mostly be enjoying his skill at the routine of surviving any threat. He can still play the part of the serenading lover very well, perhaps more perfectly than the other men who are genuinely in love. For the women it is heartbreak non stop.
Like other archetypal Mannerist figures (Don Quijote / Sancho Panza, Doktor Faustus / Mephistopheles), Don Juan has a sidekick, here called Leporello. He is a buffoonish Doppelgänger, and he can trade places with his master to save him from trouble and mislead vengeful women. I like Adam Plachetka's performance. He is a survivor and a scoundrel, ein Mitläufer in his master's demonic ploys. He sings the devastating catalogue aria with abandon, particularly the "è la grande maestosa" line where he transforms into a towering figure.
I am not a music connoisseur. Natalie Stutzmann and the orchestra play the incredibly wonderful and complex music perfectly, perhaps making it slightly more sober, avoiding brio (I imagine). Similarly, Peter Mattei's masterful interpretation of the songs is more about control than abandon.
I notice that on the Met's cast list, Federica Lombardi, Ana María Martínez and Ying Fang, the three female leads, are first billed. Federica Lombardi as Donna Anna is the real center of the production, magnificent in her beautiful and sensual interpretation. Ana María Martínez transcends the traditional buffoonish view of Donna Elvira. She is comical but also dignified although she is being repeatedly cheated in the meanest possible way. Love is blind. Ying Fang brings a spirit of fighting courage to her Zerlina.
Don Giovanni is full of "greatest hits of the opera". This time I am struck by Don Giovanni's surprisingly tender and genuine serenade performance in "Deh, vieni alla finestra". Similarly with the brilliant but cynical "Là ci darem la mano". Among the most memorable performances are Ben Bliss as Don Ottavio singing "Dalla sua pace" and "Il mio tesoro" apparently out-Mozarting Mozart in incredibly challenging passages.
All great, subtly toned down, all holds barred. The digital age cinema theatre is black. The stage image aspires to the condition of the monochrome, as does the costume design. Black, bleak and dark prevail. Only the music conveys the light of love and transcendence in the black night of the soul.
Don Giovanni is a tale of passivity, powerlessness, appeasement and defaitism against violence. This is striking from the viewpoint of the philosophy of history, because the opera was premiered on the eve of the revolution – the uprising against the very type of ruthless aristocracy personified by Don Giovanni. But we see the mounting furor even here.
Mozart believes in divine intervention. Don Giovanni being sent to Hell in the end is not a deus ex machina shortcut. Mozart was a true and profound believer. He died three years later, and during the last year of his life he completed Die Zauberflöte, his greatest celebration of love, and his sacred masterpieces, Requiem and Ave verum corpus.
Reportedly Giacomo Casanova visited the premiere of Don Giovanni in Prague, but in case he did, he did not discover a mirror image of himself on the stage. Casanova claimed interest only in women he loved. Don Juan is insatiably interested in all women, young and old, blondes and brunettes, all sizes, nations and walks of life. Love is not an issue.
Don Juan is indifferent to love, but he cannot live without women, they are like air and water to him, essential Lebensmittel for conspicuous consumption. Don Juan's way with women is nearer to hate than love. Classically, Don Juan has been seen as a narcissist, but his approach is nearer to self-hate than self-love.
In the age of Tinder, women are as likely to have multiple partners as men, and that was probably so also in Mozart's time ("così fan tutte").
Don Giovanni is being played in modern dress. Modern dress for classic plays has been the norm all my lifetime, a tired convention already when I started to see classics as a child. In the middle of the first modern-dress performance I saw (The Merry Wives of Windsor, Finnish National Theatre, 1967) I registered Tauno Palo as Falstaff (another bigger-than-life Mannerist figure like Don Giovanni) winking and smiling in resignation: "please bear with us, I don't like this any more than you do". It is a bit of a case of underestimating the audience that we are not trusted to get the topical relevance of the play without pretending that it is happening today. And yet, importantly, but this is not an issue for a Don Giovanni performance: women of today are not like the women of Rococo Austria or Renaissance Spain.
But there are men today like Don Giovanni played by Peter Mattei. There is a complexity and a determination in him that is convincing. He keeps his poker face in the most amazing situations of danger and bluff. He has seen it all and seems mostly be enjoying his skill at the routine of surviving any threat. He can still play the part of the serenading lover very well, perhaps more perfectly than the other men who are genuinely in love. For the women it is heartbreak non stop.
Like other archetypal Mannerist figures (Don Quijote / Sancho Panza, Doktor Faustus / Mephistopheles), Don Juan has a sidekick, here called Leporello. He is a buffoonish Doppelgänger, and he can trade places with his master to save him from trouble and mislead vengeful women. I like Adam Plachetka's performance. He is a survivor and a scoundrel, ein Mitläufer in his master's demonic ploys. He sings the devastating catalogue aria with abandon, particularly the "è la grande maestosa" line where he transforms into a towering figure.
I am not a music connoisseur. Natalie Stutzmann and the orchestra play the incredibly wonderful and complex music perfectly, perhaps making it slightly more sober, avoiding brio (I imagine). Similarly, Peter Mattei's masterful interpretation of the songs is more about control than abandon.
I notice that on the Met's cast list, Federica Lombardi, Ana María Martínez and Ying Fang, the three female leads, are first billed. Federica Lombardi as Donna Anna is the real center of the production, magnificent in her beautiful and sensual interpretation. Ana María Martínez transcends the traditional buffoonish view of Donna Elvira. She is comical but also dignified although she is being repeatedly cheated in the meanest possible way. Love is blind. Ying Fang brings a spirit of fighting courage to her Zerlina.
Don Giovanni is full of "greatest hits of the opera". This time I am struck by Don Giovanni's surprisingly tender and genuine serenade performance in "Deh, vieni alla finestra". Similarly with the brilliant but cynical "Là ci darem la mano". Among the most memorable performances are Ben Bliss as Don Ottavio singing "Dalla sua pace" and "Il mio tesoro" apparently out-Mozarting Mozart in incredibly challenging passages.
All great, subtly toned down, all holds barred. The digital age cinema theatre is black. The stage image aspires to the condition of the monochrome, as does the costume design. Black, bleak and dark prevail. Only the music conveys the light of love and transcendence in the black night of the soul.
Don Giovanni is a tale of passivity, powerlessness, appeasement and defaitism against violence. This is striking from the viewpoint of the philosophy of history, because the opera was premiered on the eve of the revolution – the uprising against the very type of ruthless aristocracy personified by Don Giovanni. But we see the mounting furor even here.
Mozart believes in divine intervention. Don Giovanni being sent to Hell in the end is not a deus ex machina shortcut. Mozart was a true and profound believer. He died three years later, and during the last year of his life he completed Die Zauberflöte, his greatest celebration of love, and his sacred masterpieces, Requiem and Ave verum corpus.
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