Reviews 2015
Reviews 2015
✭✭✩✩✩
by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, directed by Dmitri Tcherniakov
Canadian Opera Company, Four Seasons Centre, Toronto
January 24, 27, 30, February 1, 3, 6, 12, 14, 18 & 21, 2015
Leporello: “È confusa la sua testa,
non sa più quel ch'ei si faccia” (Act 1, Scene 5)
The Canadian Opera Company’s new production of Don Giovanni is a co-production with Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, Bolshoi Theatre and Teatro Real Madrid. The emphasis should be on the Bolshoi since the entire creative team is Russian. Director Dmitri Tcherniakov has essentially created an entirely new scenario for Mozart’s opera without changing a word of Lorenzo Da Ponte’s libretto. What will outrage many in the audience is that in this new scenario Tcherniakov depicts the famous sexual predator not as the villain of the piece, but as its victim. We have seen this directorial meddling before as in Christopher Alden’s production of Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito in 2013, where Alden decided that rather than showing us a Roman emperor famous for his clemency as in the original, he would depict Titus as a ruthless tyrant like the more infamous caesars. What is especially egregious about Tcherniakov’s direction is that it takes Regietheater a step too far since his concept also affects how Mozart’s music is played.
In Tcherniakov’s scenario there is no statue and no final dinner. Don Giovanni is not a nobleman. He and Leporello are of the same rank, not master and servant. Even stranger, all the principals are related and live in the same house. As you enter the auditorium of the Four Seasons Centre, a list is projected on the curtain indicating the new relationships Tcherniakov has made among the characters: Il Commendatore; Donna Anna, daughter of the Commendatore; Don Ottavio, Donna Anna's new fiancé; Zerlina, daughter of Donna Anna from a first marriage; Masetto, Zerlina's fiancé; Donna Elvira, Don Giovanni’s wife and Donna Anna's cousin; Don Giovanni, Donna Elvira's husband; and Leporello, a young relative of the Commendatore, living in his house.
Tcherniakov’s scheme means that, contrary to the original, everyone already knows everyone else and therefore none of the opera’s frequent uses of disguises can work. It means that when Don Giovanni kills the Commendatore at the start of the action, Donna Anna knows who did it, and then keeps quiet about the killer’s identity until halfway through the opera. Other scenes, such as when Don Giovanni and Leporello disguise themselves as each other (here in full view of Donna Elvira) become utter nonsense.
The reason for Tcherniakov’s new scenario derives from a fundamental misunderstanding of the opera. In his poorly written (or poorly translated) “Director’s Note”, Tcherniakov states of Don Giovanni, “Why, if he is guilty of all possible sins and must be punished, why through the opera are we taking his part, wishing victory to him, sympathizing with him, with the final punishment coming as a tragic one?” Who knows where Tcherniakov’s questions come from but Mozart’s Don Giovanni is not a tragic hero and we do not wish him victory or take his part. Mozart labelled the opera an opera buffa, a comic opera, because we see that the supposed great seducer not only does not succeed in his seductions but is finally punished for his sins. After all, the full title of the opera is Il dissoluto punito, ossia il Don Giovanni, (“the scoundrel punsished”) which states quite clearly this point of view.
The key to understanding the opera is its irony and that is what Tcherniakov signally fails to do. In a good production of the opera, we should note that the final moralistic chorus “Questo è il fin di chi fa mal” is sung by characters who have compromised their own morals at various points throughout the action. Don Giovanni may have been a greater sinner than they are but they are hardly free from sin.
In changing Don Giovanni from a villain to a victim, Tcherniakov portrays him as an outsider and a would-be reformer of the other characters who are “solid, rich, bourgeois, with their traditions and strict rules of living”. It is depressing to see this antique communist demonization of the bourgeoisie still trotted out in the 21st century, but it seems traditional ways of thought die hard in Russia.
How does Don Giovanni want to reform them? Tcherniakov says, “He has a feeling that he knows how our life should be changed and he wants them to follow him. He is like a Messiah and a maniac at the same time. And he wants them all to throw away all their rules, barriers, traditions and feathering. He wants to make them see everything differently. To become happy. To return back to the natural, to the animal state, to invent new language and to start everything from the scratch”.
The first problem here is that the way Tcherniakov shows Don Giovanni returning women “back to the natural” is by taking their clothes off and having sex which looks pretty much the same as being the old-fashioned seducer of the original. The second problem is that by viewing Don Giovanni as a tragic hero and social reformer, the opera’s humour is completely quashed and all the intrigues that are usually so delightfully intricate become deadly dull. To force scenes into his scheme, many become meaningless. Don Giovanni sings his madrigal not to a woman in a window, but to himself. Zerlina sings her lovely aria “Vedrai, carino, se sei buonino” not to Masetto but to Don Giovanni’s coat.
What Tcherniakov does not explain in his “Director’s Note” is why he has lengthened the period of the action from 24 hours to six months. This in itself makes numerous events in the action ridiculous. Don Giovanni’s party thus continues for weeks. Donna Anna keeps her secret of who killed her father inexplicably for at least two months. Tcherniakov signals these time intervals by having a black curtain suddenly drop with a crash and then projecting the time periods onto it. Sometimes it is “One week later”, sometimes “Five days later”, sometimes “The next day”. How Tcherniakov has determined these intervals is a mystery. The effect however has a deleterious effect on the music because it breaks up each act into numerous mini-scenes, some of which last only for a single aria. This fragments the flow of the music and the destroys the pacing of the action. But beyond this, Tcherniakov has also specified that the recitatives, which are supposed to be quick to reflect conversation, be played at a snail’s pace. Often characters will begin a recitative by speaking the words and glide into singing them. But the slowness and the constant stop-start of the mini-scenes causes what should be a lively opera to drag on interminably.
In Tcherniakov’s scheme there is no reason why Leporello should act as a servant to Don Giovanni. The Commendatore has servants, Leporello sees Don Giovanni murder him so any rationale for following him about or taking the blame for him vanishes. Nevertheless, Kyle Ketelsen has a wonderfully full but agile bass-baritone and commands the stage whenever he appears.
Tcherniakov has turned Don Ottavio, normally the wimp of the piece, into its chief villain. He is the one who gets all the characters alongside to play the final implausible trick on Don Giovanni that will cause him to have a heart attack. Michael Schade has the full measure of the role and sings his major arias with delicacy and sweetness of note.
Of the three women, Jennifer Holloway’s Donna Elvira is dramatically the most impressive. In this one case, Tcherniakov has made an improvement. This Elvira is not the usual half-crazed spurned lover. Rather Holloway convinces us that Elvira is genuinely in love with Don Giovanni despite his numerous infidelities and is reluctant to take part in Don Ottavio’s scheme. Her amber-coloured voice is full of power and passion. As Donna Anna, Jane Archibald is forced into a lot of ridiculous stage business, but she rises above it all with her silvery, precise coloratura. As Zerlina, Sasha Djihanian wields a bright, attractive soprano and acts with great sensitivity. Zachary Nelson is an unusually macho, strong-voiced Masetto, to the point where his complaint of pains after Don Giovanni beats him don’t ring true.
Those who have become used to hearing Mozart played on period instruments will find that the COC Orchestra under Michael Hofstetter sounds uncommonly rich and heavy. His is clearly a 19th-century view of Mozart that relates him more to the Romantic composers than to the 18th-century. His tempi tend to be slower than usual and this combined with the slowed recitatives and the stop-start pacing means that the orchestra never generates the momentum or energy it should.
The COC may co-own this production of Don Giovanni, but I sincerely hope that it never brings it back to Toronto. Tcherniakov’s new take on the opera not only fails to make the story clearer but makes it less comprehensible that the original. His meddling with the music makes it an insult to a Mozart’s masterpiece. At least, Toronto is large enough to have another opera company, Opera Atelier, that has in its repertoire a Don Giovanni that is true to Mozart’s designation of it as an opera buffa and is an infinitely superior representation of this work than Tcherniakov’s.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review will appear later this year in Opera News.
Photos: Jennifer Holloway, Kyle Ketelsen, Zachary Nelson, Sasha Djihanian, Jane Archibald, Michael Schade and Russell Braun (on floor); Jennifer Holloway, Michael Schade, Zachary Nelson, Russell Braun, Jane Archibald, Sasha Djihanian and Kyle Ketelsen; Russell Bruan as Don Giovanni . ©2015 Michael Cooper.
For tickets, visit www.coc.ca.
2015-01-28
Don Giovanni