Wilhelm Furtwängler, in a letter to Dimitri Mitropoulos, once wrote: “The question of tempo in Don Giovanni has been raised by amateurs and music critics who feel that it is their duty to be my adversaries on a dogmatic basis. Principally, in my opinion, one can dwell on the tempos, accepting or rejecting them, only in connection with the overall conception of making music. A tempo is not a question of taste, but the natural expression of a particular work. Furthermore, the tempo in many cases is ductile, elastic.”
The “natural expression” of Mozart’s masterwork, as it is conceived and splendidly realized by director Marshall Pynkoski and conductor Stefano Montanari for Opera Atelier, requires tempi that seem madly and supernaturally propelled toward the libidinous Giovanni’s famous demise. Such momentum adds to the desperate or fatalistic tone inherent in Mozart’s and Da Ponte’s opera since this Giovanni- cocksure (intended, sorry), defiant, and unrepentant to the end- seems willingly destined to hellfire and determined to get there as fast as he can.
While Da Ponte treated his libretto as a then popular dramma giocoso which combined serious and comic elements, Mozart catalogued Don Giovanni as an “opera buffa,” a comedy, and Pynkoski and Montanari have opted decidedly for the latter, doing youthful and funny in the fast lane. Before the performance, Pynkoski introduced the opera as an “outrageous comedy” in which “speed and youth” are essential in this tale of the “world’s most incorrigible lover.” His take on the opera proved brilliantly theatrical, a production I will long treasure for several reasons.
Still, speed aside, the Tafelmusik Orchestra, under Montanari’s elegant two arm style of conducting, supported the cast of visually-appealing singers throughout with an orchestral underpinning that was detailed, deliciously textured and nuanced, even as it hastened them through their arias, recitatives and ensemble groupings. Already in the overture one sensed a frenzied madness in the ease with which the strings tossed off ascending and descending runs and a restless momentum in all of it. A breathtaking finale to Act One, where speed enhanced the urgency of the goings on, proved that such choice in tempo could yield gripping vocal results.
Even at a rapid clip, Pynkoski’s staging too gave discriminating attention to evocatively defined and character-revealing details and also to freshly executed touches of delightful stage business. I’ve rarely seen borrowed Commedia dell’arte style as quite alive and clownishly well, thank you, as in Opera Atelier’s buffa context. People roughed up one another, felt up one another, all with big gestures, and throughout it was a very physical production with much slapping, tugging and pulling and skipping about. Declarative poses where physical presence matched lyrics and music were de rigueur and there were some reality-shifting touches too with the Don ripping off a guitar from the orchestra pit and Leporello consulting with the Maestro. There was little time for the audience to check out the surtitles lest one miss a delightful directorial touch zipping by.
And what of the opera’s potently dark side, made seemingly less ominous in cosmic import here by the emphasis on comedy? Certainly there was a tragic edge in Donna Anna’s mourning, for one, but any sense ultimately of divine powers involved in teaching the Don a lesson was much softened by the sometimes balletic form of movement of both dancers and singers, one that was pleasingly fluid, and the hilarious bold physicality of the company. There was even a stylized fight scene: during the Commendatore’s murder, the Don easily handled four servants, giving one a foot in the crotch before giving the Donna Anna’s father a knife in the belly. All in all, this was a production that scored high on physical entertainment alone.
The director had chosen tricky turf to negotiate here since, however comically Mozart and Da Ponte regarded their story, both gave definite indication in music and word that their opera wasn’t simply a light entertainment without roots of metaphysical substance. Indeed comedy works best when one knows real issues are on the table, be they human or supernatural, and that something is at stake. Don Giovanni here is an opera of much human insight, for one. It also demonstrates that we have no option but to laugh with our vulnerable existence in this impossible world that offers only nothingness at its end, since laughter is a cosmic counterweight to man’s hopelessness. Folks here, as they speed through their lives, also speed to their death.
Ricardo Muti recently observed that operatic voices nowadays tend to be of a lighter quality and it was so in this production. That consideration aside, this was a remarkable cast, individually distinct in vocal beauties and deftly able to run with the extreme demands of the tempi. Phillip Addis offered firm tonal shadings and pleasing elegance in his phrasing, as the sexy rascal Don Giovanni. With a rock solid though not huge and extroverted voice, one more aptly suited for characterization than pronouncement, his was a case where sometimes sound determined the weight of character and he seemed more an everyday fellow than a heavy symbol, one of the bunch, one more helplessly driven by libido than inherently evil in attitude.
His solid, fluid voice and sharp enunciation were most evident in Finch’han dal Vino which, as with several other arias throughout the opera, seemed a tad too rushed by the tempo du jour to have full dramatic impact. This Don was pathologically self-centred , not a force of nature but one forced on by nature, very contemporary in not acknowledging the needs or very existence of others. The sharp edge to his baritone enhanced his characterization beautifully, as if it was meant to cut off his deeper connection with humanity.
Vasil Garvanliev’s Leporello was a man of insinuating persona, quite animated in gestures of arms and fingers, almost inhumanly light of foot, and cheeky and sassy to the max. This Leporello’s assertively juicy presence in voice, his defiant and mischievous manner, and his quickness of mind and agile antics certainly drew our attention to him as an inhabitant of a magical reality. Garvanliev’s Leporello anchored the production in comedy and at the same time, like the whole cast, offered many vocal pleasures like security in range, subtle manipulation of emotional and tonal colours, pleasing confidence and graceful flexibility though each register. This Leporello was, theatrically, a wondrous creation who defined the world.
After a self-indulgent entrance, with melodramatic sighs and dagger in hand and ever breathless manner, Peggy Kriha Dye’s Donna Elvira established herself as a temperamental and complex presence who drove the action. Hers was an effectively etched “ no fury like a woman scorned” characterization that, while dramatically and musically over the top, subtly focused her vocal resources in doing pathos, fury, caricature, indignation, gentleness, and the list goes on as long as Leporello’s. She deftly walked the line between genuine feeling and human absurdity that perfectly suited the general ambiguity of the production. She was richly exciting.
Meghan Lindsay, as the grieving but assertive Donna Anna, offered dramatically infused singing that rang bright and clear. Hers was a voice that was tonally round and firm, one that suggested a constant and perhaps unreachable undercurrent of feeling and also some emotional authority. It was clear that she wore the pants in her relationship with Don Ottavio, though one doubts she would have them on with Don Giovanni around. Bass-baritone Curtis Sullivan’s very human Masetto seemed a man of humanly tentative presence, as one might expect of one linked to the mercurial Zerlina. More virile sounding than the Don in day to day matters, he was, in doubling as the Commendatore, not so otherworldly, not one to make ice of one’s blood.
A caressing and speed-stopping Dalla sua Pace by tenor Lawrence Wiliford as a reflective Don Ottavio revealed a gentleness, a clarity and finesse in meticulously negotiated cadences. His was an appealing tenor who suggested human depth and willing introspection to find it. He also overtly stated the opera’s political undercurrent by asking “Could a nobleman be capable of such a crime?” since nobility’s abuse of privilege had and would cause many a revolution.
Soprano Carla Huhtanen presented a sweetly lyrical Zerlina, one with bright presence in her voice and manner, from comic melodramatics to pinpoint plaintive sighs to screeches, all with perky lightness and staccato enunciation. She was coy and flirtatious, full of feminine wiles, kittenish and chirpy with indignation. One knew that Masetto would have his hands full with her and sometimes tied.
The curtain at the Elgin Theatre featured a giant silhouette of Mozart and behind that set designer Gerard Gauci, costume designer Martha Mann and Lighting Designer Bonnie Beecher created an ambiguous and somewhat muted world of melancholy. Here the director could mine musical cues for physical action, since there seemed to be several in each bar of Mozart, and do a quite modern take on Mozart’s opera in which the Don is a morally-challenged sexual everready who, as they say, goes with the flow wherever it takes him, which is usually a woman’s bed. Please see Leporello’s catalogue of the Don’s conquests.
Pynkoski brought the performance full circle when, after we were firmly told by the sextet that “sinners will come to an evil end,” the curtain rose on the Don quite content in hell. He’d been brought there by male demons -bare torsos each one since this is Opera Atelier- and he smiled and toasted us. No doubt this gesture revealed the reason he was so popular a lover with the ladies, because he could make the best of absolutely any situation. That was also perhaps the lesson of this speeding ticket production in which a whole magical world was masterfully created by all involved –we are doomed and we do what we can to handle that blunt fact of our existence. Thus, comedy and tragedy, like the Don and his servant, are inseparable twin energies that weave through our lives and, as this production showed, they are hard to tell apart sometimes.
To end, here’s my favorite concise story about the fundamental importance of theatre. One day, the great Harlequin Giuseppe-Domenico Biancolelli, who lived from 1640 to 1688 and was known as Dominique, was suffering what we now call neurasthenia. It’s a condition that involves symptoms of fatigue, anxiety, headache, neuralgia, and depressed mood. The doctor did not recognize that his patient was the celebrated comic actor Dominique and, to remedy his unfortunate condition, advised him “go see Dominique play” Perhaps the doctor was unintentionally but wisely telling the depressed comic actor to laugh at himself.
