Don Giovanni – REVIEW

If Mozart had conducted Opera Australia’s current production of Don Giovanni, he would have heard the same rapturous applause that greeted the work in Vienna on its first night in 1787.

What a feast for the ears this opera is, if such a thing were possible – this production about the licentious killer Don Giovanni, in whom lust and murder are combined in fearful measure.

Once again, a talented Ukrainian singer takes centre stage in an OA production following bass Taras Berezhansky’s commanding Attila.

Andrei Kymach inhabits the role of Don Giovanni, portraying him as the vile seducer he is, prepared to trick and cheat his way to get what he wants in any situation. Kymach’s rich baritone captured the nuances of both Mozart’s score and Da Ponte’s libretto, and was a thrill to listen to.

As the Don’s long-suffering retainer Leporello – the “buffo” character – Russian-born Yuri Kissin employed his bass-baritone to dexterous effect in carrying out the Don’s unsavoury orders while also providing a sardonic comment on them, thus providing the only comic relief in an otherwise dark opera.

Unusually in opera, and indeed in any vocal music at all, is work composed specifically for baritone and bass voices, but in Don Giovanni there are several trios for bass / baritone voices, such as the magnificent trio sung when the stone statue comes to take the Don away. David Parkin’s stentorous bass resonates through the auditorium and sends a chill down not only Don Giovanni’s back but all who hear his words of warning.

The female singers in this production are at least equal to the male voices.

Sophie Salvesani is heartrending as Donna Anna, whom Don Giovanni fails to seduce and whose father he kills, and Bronwyn Douglass is magnificent as the noblewoman Donna Elvira, who pursues Don Giovanni after he seduces her and compromises her honour. Finally, there is Cathy Di Zhang, the peasant girl whose marriage festivities are interrupted by Don Giovanni as he tries to seduce the young woman.

Musically, one could not fault this production which was swept along by the baton of Guillaume Tourniaire, but I do have a bone to pick with the lighting design, no doubt thought up by the Scottish director David McVicar, whose production this is.

Is the stage rendered so dimly to reflect the bleak theme of the opera? Is the lighting made so dim to represent the moral blindness of Don Giovanni?

Did David McVicar make the stage setting so gloomy to replicate the weather of his native country?

Surely the reason could not be that the cast were provided with clothes retrieved from Vinnies?

Whatever the reason, let this be good advice to theatre directors all over the world: remember that at least half of your audience members are over 70 and at least half of these will soon be having their cataract operations. They have great difficulty with a stage setting as generally gloomy as this production.

That said, the combination of outstanding voices and Mozart’s score made for a musically and dramatically fulfilling evening.

Until February 17

Joan Sutherland Theatre, Sydney Opera House, Bennelong Point

opera.org.au