Don Giovanni on TV

[gamba]

Am surprised there are no comments on last night's performance on BBC 2. I wasn't going to watch - hate 'modern' interpretations but was eventually 'won over.' Who can resist Gerald Finley & I don't just mean the girls !

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I caught the end of it only - not bad, what I heard, but I'm not keen on attention-seeking modern interpretations either.

[aeolium]

I enjoyed it musically - the orchestra was very good and most of the soloists, especially Finley as the Don and Anna Samuil as Donna Anna (and also William Burden as Don Ottavio, even though one of his arias, Il mio tesoro, was cut). I prefer a darker production, which this certainly was, though I don't think the 1950s costume was very successful, and Luca Pisaroni though in good voice overdid the slapstick as Leporello. The performing score seemed to be mainly based on the first Vienna performance, with Ottavio only having one aria, the Leporello/Zerlina duet Per queste tue manine being included - I think a poor substitute for Il mio tesoro. Also a shortened version of the final scene was performed, which seemed rather abrupt.

Some of the gimmicks seemed pointless - why was the Commendatore an unburied corpse in the cemetery scene with DG and Leporello? And why did the Commendatore appear from under the dining table when Elvira and Leporello had seen him at the door? And if the ball at the end of Act 1 was just a drunken orgy, why would anyone particularly bother about Zerlina?

Oh well, opera productions seem to be just the playthings of directors - at least we have the music to fall back on.

[Bryn]

I too find the conbination of 18th Century HIPP musical performance with mid-20th Century 'hip' stage presentation so ridiculously anachronistic as to be insulting to both the work and the audience. If they want a modern staging, at least be consitent when it comes to the orchestral contribution.

[Chris Newman]

Oh dear! A case of chalk and cheese or sheep and goats. You take-a your picka. I found it fascinating to see the original musical version: also seeing why Mozart called it a comedy. I have seen Gerald Finley and Kate Royal in the Covent Garden version so it was fascinating to see the changes. The original version brings Donna Elvira to the fore (too often she seems a head case) and redeems Zerlina from being a mere bimbo/trollop. Having played Don Ottavio myself I thought William Burden was one of the best since Alexander Young. Neither of those singers (Burden or Young) allowed Ottavio to become a wimp (I do not count).

I did not think the shallow grave was convincing in the production but thought the appearance of the Commendatore from under the table effective. After the Covent Garden production with its 40 foot flames at the finale I wondered how the Glyndebourne version with its flames at the end of the first half would top that. It did not need to. The various treatments of the dead Don's body spoke volumes.

Merry Christmas, one and all

[Ferretfancy]

I only caught the last act, but it did win me over, but do sadist set designers make them clamber up and down rotting timber all the time?

I remember taking a non opera friend to the Goodall ENO Rheingold with the Rhinemaidens suspended on wires. His whispered comment was " If the stage hands get stroppy they can swing them together like conkers! "

Ah well! Happy New Year to all!
Ferret

[verismissimo]

I went to the dress rehearsal in the summer, loved the orchestral playing and conducting (OAE/Jurowski), liked some of the singing (Finley the best) and closed my eyes for large portions of the production.

Nothing new there then! :)

[bluestateprommer]

Saw the video of this Glyndebourne Don Giovanni production yesterday, not too long before the 1-week deadline. I had my own criticisms of aspects of the staging, such as the very opening with Leporello dressed kind of in his skivvies, even though he's supposed to be in the streets as Don G.'s watchdog. Plus, the more "Italian" gestures of the characters seemed rather out of sync with the nominal setting in Spain, even if everyone is singing in Italian anyway. Given the slightly nebbishy garb of Luca Pisaroni's Leporello, I wasn't sure if that garb was meant as a Paparazzo / La Dolce Vita kind of sidekick portrayal, with the use of the retro-era Polaroid camera making me think of Paparazzo in particular. But if nothing else, LP's final gesture at the end with the Polaroid over Gerald Finley's dead Don G. made total sense, in the context of this production. Pretty solid cast vocally, granted that I'm not at all a super-aficionado of this (or any other) opera, to know the differences between the Prague and Vienna versions and such.

Watching this production also made for an interesting contrast with the Met Opera's 1978 video production a few weeks ago as part of their daily streaming series. It's kind of hard to articulate, but from watching that older video, that had an extremely different feel, in the sense that trying to look as 'realistic' as possible in moments like the banquet scene, with loads of real food on stage, actually heightened the feeling of artifice and the "stagey" vibe. This next statement may sound borderline nonsensical (or offensive), but maybe what I'm trying to say is that in the Met Opera production, you never forget that all of the lead singers "look like opera singers", and that the Met's production "looks like an opera production".

The Glyndebourne production is clearly more stylized and not as superficially "literal" in the "realism" sense. But compared to the 1970's Met, Glyndebourne's was a much, much darker take on the work, emphasized by Finley's willingness not to make the Don all that sympathetic, and show how vicious and awful Don G. is, especially in the graphic murder of the Commendatore at the outset. This contrasts with James Morris in the Met show, who smiled a lot more throughout, which softened the ickier aspects of the character subliminally. Finley, by contrast, seemed to emphasize the violence and cruelty in the Don, except in the Act II serenade, for just that one moment. Compared with the Met's singers, none of the Glyndebourne production's singers "looked like opera singers" (and that comment is meant in a good way).

In the sound from the video, the continuo seemed a bit light, which of course didn't stop Vladimir Jurowski from giving him a solo bow at the end. That is definitely another contrast of sound, with a period-instrument ensemble at Glyndebourne, of smaller size than the Met's orchestra, to be sure. No doubt there are other major differences when presenting a Mozart opera in a space that is much more intimate than the Met, at the very least half its size.

BTW, Finnish National Opera has a video of Don Giovanni available via the OperaVision site:

https://operavision.eu/en/library/performances/operas/don-giovanni-finnish-national-opera-and-ballet

Because I've seen streaming videos of Don G. twice very recently in quite short succession, I probably won't watch the Finnish Nat. Opera version, more out of Don G. overload rather than any prejudgment on that other production.