✭✭✭✭✩

by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, directed by Robin Guarino

Canadian Opera Company, Four Seasons Centre, Toronto

October 5-31, 2008

In the COC’s current production of Don Giovanni, Robin Guarino does away with most of the directorial clichés that often burden this opera, but she also does away with the influence of the supernatural in the story.  Whether you find this unsettling or fascinating will depend on how open you are to new interpretations of classic works.

Don Giovanni, or Don Juan to use his original Spanish name, is, of course, the most famous womanizer in literature.  As a kind of über-male, what drives him the pursuit and conquest of women.  Once conquered they are of no interest and he must move on.  What preoccupies most commentators is Don Giovanni’s refusal to repent when finally called to a divine reckoning.  Under Guarino, Brett Polegato casts aside the familiar portrayal of the character as a loveable rake.  His Giovanni is moody, sullen and prone to violence.  He shows that Giovanni’s life of constant conquest is also a life of constant repetition that has lost its excitement.  Nothing goes right for Giovanni now, as the libretto notes, and Guarino views his actions as self-destructive.  Polegato’s good looks, his burnished baritone and his ability to communicate complex states of mind make him ideal in this role.

As Leporello, Robert Pomakov uses none of the usual comic shtick others rely on to enliven Don Giovanni’s faithful servant.  Instead, this Leporello is a would-be Giovanni himself who, in Guarino’s version, seeks revenge on his master when Giovanni lets him take all the blame for his misdeeds.  The most beautiful singing of the evening comes from Jessica Muirhead as Donna Anna, whose father Giovanni kills when he tries to protect her.  Muirhead makes Anna’s realization that Giovanni was her masked attacker truly electrifying.  Julie Makerov also sings beautifully as Donna Elvira, who foolishly demands constancy from Giovanni.  Gordon Gietz is pure-voiced but made to look intentionally nerdish as Don Ottavio, Donna Anna fiancé. 

Jorge Jara’s design moves the action up to the 1960s which nicely suits Guarino’s critique of the “anything goes” ethos of the period.  Similarly, conductor William Lacey emphatically relates Mozart’s music forward to the Romantic period rather than backward to the 18th-century.  In Guarino’s interpretation Don Giovanni is not physically dragged down to hell at the end but rather dies realizing he has made his own life a hell.  We may miss the fireworks of a supernatural climax but Guarino shows us at least one reality that metaphor may represent.

©Christopher Hoile

Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2008-10-06.

Photo: Brett Polegato with Virginia Hatfield as Zerlina. ©Michael Cooper.