Don Giovanni, Royal Opera, 16 February 2012

Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

Don Giovanni – Erwin Schrott
Leporello – Alex Esposito
Donna Anna – Carmela Remigio
Donna Elvira – Ruxandra Donose
Don Ottavio – Pavol Breslik
Zerlina – Kate Lindsey
Masetto – Matthew Rose
Commendatore – Reinhard Hagen

Francesca Zambello (director)
Bárbara Lluch (revival director)
Maria Bjørnson (designs)
Paul Pyant (lighting)
William Hobbs (fight director)
Stephen Mear (movement)

Images: Royal Opera/Mike Hoban
(except where otherwise stated)
Don Giovanni (Erwin Schrott) and Donna Anna
(Carmela Remigio)

Royal Opera Chorus (chorus master: Renato Balsadonna)

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Constantinos Carydis (conductor)


For those whose operatic priorities lie firmly and indeed exclusively in the realm of singing, there would have been enough here to satisfy: not necessarily something to be taken entirely for granted, given the compromised vocalism one sometimes endures. But, even assuming that one could somehow disregard one of the noisiest, most ill-behaved audiences I have had the misfortune to experience at Covent Garden, a person with even the slightest interest in opera as drama would have been sorely disappointed. It frankly beggars belief that, especially for so popular a work, Francesca Zambello’s production was not retired after a single outing, for rarely in my experience has there been such critical unanimity about any staging of any opera. Doubtless revival director Bárbara Lluch did what she could, and there were even signs in the first act that the deep-frozen corpse might occasionally be twitching in the direction of the merely comatose. Nevetheless, Zambello’s production remained as vacuous as any opera production I can recall. Its one glimmer of an idea turns out to be nothing of the sort: religious imagery remains nothing more than religious tat. And that, despite ludicrous hairstyles and the bizarre pointing hand, is it. Faced with a re-dramatisation of the Fall, pre-emption of Mephistopheles, one of the greatest scores ever written, etc., etc., there comes nothing in response. Don Giovanni, for reasons that are not entirely clear to me, seems to present almost insuperable difficulties to contemporary directors; the only two I can recall emerging with relative honour in the theatre are Graham Vick at Glyndebourne and Calixto Bieito at ENO. Yet even the most perverse concept, even the most unclear, such as that Roland Schwab recently served up for Berlin’s Deutsche Oper, would be preferable to nothing at all. Has Zambello ever read Da Ponte, let alone Mozart? If so, that only serves to render her ‘response’ the more pitiful. Her similarly ideas-free Carmen just about works on as straightforward level of response as one can muster, but this, like Giovanni himself, lies utterly beyond redemption.

It would be vain to claim that the directorial context held no implications for the vocal performances, but the singers almost all emerged with considerable credit, the sole disappointment being a woolly Masetto from Matthew Rose. Erwin Schrott’s Giovanni was beautifully sung and as well acted as one had any right to expect, yet even the darkness of his tone at its best sounded less dangerous than it had when he took the role in the same production in 2007. He could be readily forgiven for simply having had enough, though he would doubtless have been delighted by the support of Anna Netrebko from the audience. Alex Esposito is a fine Leporello, as he managed to show even in the aforementioned Berlin staging, but here too often he was forced to play the clown: a wasted opportunity, though he nevertheless managed to shine in the Catalogue Aria. Carmela Remigio proved an intelligent Donna Anna: no mean feat in context. What she achieved vocally, with fine command of line and ever-welcome ease in her native tongue, fully vindicated the faith placed in her by no less a conductor than Claudio Abbado. Ruxandra Donose actually seemed more at ease than she had in Berlin; again she did vocally what she could. Kate Lindsey was a spirited Zerlina, if perhaps sometimes too saucy for Mozartian style (though one could hardly blame her for attempting something, indeed anything, to alleviate the directorial tedium). Bar an unfortunate and highly-exposed scooping up to the note in ‘Il mio tesoro’ – the much- and justly-maligned ‘traditional’ conflation of Vienna and Prague was employed – Pavol Breslik made an attractive-toned Don Ottavio. Reinhard Hagen, despite a truly absurd tempo forced upon him, managed to make the Commendatore’s words during the Stone Guest scene at least count for something.

Don Ottavio (Pavol Breslik)

To begin with, I wondered whether the well-nigh uniformly negative criticism – from the first of the two casts – of Constantinos Carydis’s conducting had been unfair. The Overture was far too fast, in both sections; indeed, there was no discernible change of tempo between them. But thereafter for a while there was greater variation than I had been led to expect. If hardly Colin Davis or Daniel Barenboim, let alone Busch, Giulini, or Furtwängler, I had heard considerably worse. There was even some sensitively shaped handling of orchestral recitative, something not to be taken entirely for granted in an age with a dearth of Mozart conductors. But early relative promise dissipated, the end of the first act finale falling flatter than I have ever heard. It was not a matter of the climax running away with itself, as one might expect; there simply was no climax. The music stopped, and that was the end of that. What one might politely call eccentrically fast tempi became, if not quite the norm, than depressingly frequent in the second act, yet the effect was not hyperactive but inert. The appearance of the Stone Guest was somehow – and not just on account of the production – utterly inconsequential, Mozart’s chords skated over as if they were nothing, or worse than nothing: something out of Philip Glass, perhaps. The epilogue was as ruinously hard-driven as any Mozart performance I have encountered. Carydis’s singers and even some in the audience deserved far, far better.

Carmen, Royal Opera, 5 June 2010

Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

Moralés – Dawid Kimberg
Micaëla – Maija Kovalevska
Don José – Bryan Hymel
Zuniga – Nicolas Courjal
Carmen – Christine Rice
Frasquita – Elena Xanthoudakis
Mercédés – Paula Murrihy
Lillas Pastia – Caroline Lena Olsson
Escamillo – Aris Argiris
Le Dancaïre – Adrian Clarke
Le Remendado – Harry Nicoll
Guide – Anthony de Baeck

Francesca Zambello (director)
Duncan Macfarland (revival director)
Tanya McCallin (designs)
Paule Constable (lighting)
Arthur Pita (choreography)
Mike Loades (fight director)
Natalie Dakin (revival fight director)

Actors, Dancers
Members of Trinity Boys’ Choir and Trinity School, Croydon (director: David Swinson)
Members of Tiffin Girls’ School Choir (choirmaster: Simon Ferris)
Royal Opera Chorus and extra chorus (chorus director: Renato Balsadonna)
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House


I wish I could dislike Francesca Zambello's production of Carmen as much in practice as I do in theory. Zambello’s West-End spectacular approach relies upon a naturalism that might even give the stage directors of Shaftesbury Avenue pause for thought. It in no way seems to have moved on from what I saw at the Deutsche Oper, Berlin last year – except that was a 1979 production, hurriedly revived when a new director fell ill. There are manifold irritations: the ‘picturesque’ urchins, the horse and donkey, and worst of all, the grotesque Madonna wheeled on for a priest to bless Escamillo and Carmen before the bull-fight. (Zambello seems to have a thing about Madonna figures, as witnessed by her Covent Garden Don Giovanni, in which the religious imagery had more of a rightful place, though it was a far worse production.) And yet, in a way, it all works. There are no revelations; there is no discernible concept at work. One is nevertheless grateful for the lack of perversity and for relative lack of impediments to the characters’ expressing themselves. Intimacy is lost – and that is a serious thing for Carmen, an opéra comique, not a grand opera. If Zambello were a composer, she would surely be Meyerbeer. But Meyerbeer had a certain sense of theatre and there are times when one might prefer to listen to the best of Les Huguenots to certain other, far-from-neglected swathes of the operatic repertoire. Duncan Macfarland certainly does his best as revival director to make it all work and to ensure as much interaction between the characters as the too-grand staging will permit. It will probably look impressive in a straightforward sort of way on the big screen.

Vocally, we had a mixed bag. Bryan Hymel struggled for much of the time as Don José. At his most cruelly exposed during the arias, he picked up somewhat for the final scene. When I saw this production before, the role was taken by Jonas Kaufmann: a more than usually odious comparison. Likewise for Ildebrando D’Arcangelo’s smouldering, chocolate-toned Escamillo and the present run’s Aris Argiris. Argiris can be forgiven, though, for lacking the sheer charisma of such an operatic star. All in all, he showed considerable promise, though he seemed to tire in the fourth act. Nicolas Courjal, however, made a more virile impression as the lieutenant, Zuniga, than either of the two principal men. Christine Rice is a versatile artist, with repertoire ranging – at least – from Monteverdi to Birtwistle. She is not, however, the first person I would have thought of as a Carmen. That said, she did a good job of confounding expectations through her innate musical intelligence and a stage presence of not inconsiderable sensuality. Her French compared favourably with that of most of her colleagues (a major bugbear throughout). Maija Kovalevska made Micaëla as interesting a character as I have experienced in the theatre, presenting a figure of greater allure than the typical pallid angel we and, to some extent, the score expect. This was an impressive house debut by any standards. There was, moreover, much to be impressed with in the smaller roles. Elena Xanthoudakis’s Frasquita and Paula Murrihy’s Mercédès sounded a true gypsy – or rather, Bizet’s fantasy-gypsy – presence, whilst a subtly modulated Moralès from Dawid Kimberg made one wish that the character might return. The choral singing was excellent: full marks not only to Renato Balsadonna and his Royal Opera chorus (augmented) but to the children’s choirs, from whom one could hear every word. Dancing and choreography were of an impeccably high standard too.

However, the true star of the evening was without a shadow of a doubt the conductor, Constantinos Carydis, marking another Royal Opera debut. He presented Bizet’s score with fire, colour, grace, precision, dramatic flow, and true structural coherence. The darkness that lies beneath the surface was powerfully conveyed, not least the ‘real story’, belying Carmen’s words, of which he spoke to me in an interview a week previously. Here we could feel, quite frighteningly, the nature of her real feelings for Don José – at least those of who bothered to listen and to turn off our mobile telephones. There was not an ounce of sentimentality, just as it should be in this work of realism. The omnipotence and omnipresence of Fate could be heard from the pit, without any descent into melodrama. In this, the contribution of the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House was, of course, crucial. Every section was excellent: one was reminded once again that this is an orchestra, which, on top form as here, can rival any. I hope that we shall hear more of Carydis in London and at Covent Garden. Many good things have been said about his Gluck and his Mozart: an opportunity to judge for ourselves would be most welcome.

Cherevichki, Royal Opera, 20 November 2009

(Set design: Mikhail Mokrov)

Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

Solokha – Larissa Diadkova
The Devil – Maxim Mikhailov
Chub – Vladimir Matorin
Panas – John Upperton
Oxana – Olga Guryakova
Vakula – Vsevold Grivnov
Pan Golova – Alexander Vassiliev
The Schoolmaster – Viacheslav Voynarovskiy
Odarka – Olga Sabadoch
Wood Goblin – Changhan Lim
Echo – Andrew Macnair
His Highness – Sergei Leiferkus
Master of Ceremonies – Jeremy White

Principal Dancers – Mara Galeazzi, Gary Avis
Dancers of the Royal Ballet – Tara-Brigitte Bhavnani, Cindy Jourdain, Kirsten McNally, Pietra Mello-Pittman, Bennet Garside, Kenta Kura, Ernst Meisner, Johannes Stepanek
Cossack Dancers – Ivan Furgala, Arron Jones, Greg Smith, Bruce Tetlow

Francesca Zambello (director)
Mikhail Mokrov (set designs)
Tatiana Noginova (costume designs)
Rick Fisher (lighting)
Alastair Marriott (choreography)

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Chorus of the Royal Opera House (chorus master: Stephen Westrop)
Alexander Polianichko (conductor)

Alexander Polianichko’s enthusiasm, when I interviewed him, for Tchaikovsky’s Cherevichki was infectious. His advocacy of the score in the theatre proved equally strong. No one in the audience could have been in any doubt concerning the identity of the composer. The characteristic Tchaikovskian ebb and flow, the orchestral sound, the sheen and sweep of the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House’s strings: all were present and convincing. The need of which he spoke to allow the singers to be heard was met, without reducing the orchestral contribution in stature – the ‘accompanying’ route of lesser conductors. If the work came across as somewhat sectional, that is because it is, but also a consequence of the audience’s irritating habit of applauding everything (that is, when people could be distracted from coughing and sounding their electronic devices).

For the problem really lies with the work itself. The Royal Opera House should be applauded for mounting its first ever production. (Apart from a Garsington production in 2004, that seems to be just about it in terms of British stagings – and even the Bolshoi does not have the work in its repertory.) Cherevichki certainly deserves its chance to step out from the shadows and is indeed a better work than many that hold their place in the repertory – anything by Verdi, for instance. But Eugene Onegin or The Queen of Spades it is not, let alone Mussorgsky. The score has its moments, especially during the ballet music, here superbly choreographed by Alastair Marriott and exquisitely danced, making for a definite extra attraction for opera-loving balletomanes – or should that be the other way round? Royal Ballet principals Mara Galeazzi and Gary Avis impressed greatly, as did members of the corps de ballet and the Cossack dancers, three of them members of the Zaporozhian Cossacks. The St Petersburg music of the third act – in Tchaikovsky’s terms, that is, for here the four acts were presented as two – has its moments as well, not least the courtly evocations of The Queen of Spades. But the evocations of fate do not seem to lead anywhere; unlike the symphonies or the greater operas, nothing really seems to be at stake. The Italianate passages tend towards Glinka or indeed Verdi. Moreover, the lighter moments, of which they are many, tend towards the nondescript; humour was never really the composer’s forte. I should have defied anyone to find amusing the concealment of Solokha’s admirers in coal sacks, or their emergence therefrom, but the audience reaction proved me wrong.(Few operatic comedies are actually funny, and even when they are, for instance Le nozze di Figaro or Die Meistersinger, their greatness lies in a true sadness that eludes the composer on this occasion.) What often emerges is a surprisingly nationalistic Tchaikovsky, with considerable folk-song reference, but one who finds it hard to convince. Often he will do so by insistence; here he flits around somewhat, without achieving the magical lightness of touch of so much of his ballet music.

The singing was mixed. Diction was generally good; even as a non-Russian speaker, I think I could have transcribed a good number of the words. Maxim Mikhailov showed that he could act as well as sing, as the Devil, though one might have expected a greater ‘presence’ in both senses. Larissa Diadkova exhibited more of this as the witch Solokha, though with a few vagaries of tuning. Sadly, there were more than a few in Olga Guryakova’s, especially during the first act, where she was all over the place. Some might find the generosity of her vibrato idiomatic; for the rest of us it was something of a trial. She came more into her own in the final act, but there were too many unpleasant memories by then truly to be convinced. Her beloved, Vakula, received a stronger performance from Vsevolod Grivnov, hapless by intent rather than by default. The massed array of deep Russian voices did not disappoint, and there were notable performances in St Petersburg from Sergei Leiferkus and Jeremy White.

Francesca Zambello’s production plumbed no depths, but that is hardly what the work is about. The direction of the characters was alert and musical. I do not know how much input Marriott as choreographer had here, but whoever was responsible for tallying words, gesture, and music deserves gratitude. (Such an alliance should go without saying, but tone-deaf stage direction is, sadly, more often the rule than the exception.) The greatest impression was made by Mikhail Mokrov’s stage designs and Tatiana Noginova. Their Ukrainian naïveté and, during the Petersburg scene, courtly opulence are richly evocative. It made perfect sense to learn from a programme article that Mokrov is an illustrator, for it is a children’s picture-book that is most often evoked. As in the case of the Mariinsky’s Tale of Tsar Saltan, brought last season to Sadler’s Wells, it is difficult for a jaded Westerner not to take these scenes ironically, but I do not think that is how they were intended. Young children will, I suspect, be enchanted by them, though whether they will have the patience for a three-hour opera, interval included, is another matter.

The opera, then, is no neglected masterpiece, but this is so rare an opportunity afforded by Covent Garden that it is well worth grasping. There are plans to broadcast it on BBC Radio 3 (Saturday 5 December, 6.30 p.m.) and on BBC 2 at some point over Christmas. It is also scheduled for release on DVD, ensuring that a larger audience will be able to judge for itself. One small matter: the Royal Opera has, understandably, used an English title, The Tsarina’s Slippers rather than the Russian for the ‘slippers’, Cherevichki. Richard Taruskin, who ought to know, counsels that they are not slippers at all, but ‘high-heeled, narrow-toed women’s holiday boots’. I can understand why The Tsarina’s or, as we hear in the text, Tsaritsa’s High-heeled, Narrow-toed, Women’s Holiday Boots might not have been thought the best title, but ‘boots’ rather than ‘slippers’ perhaps?

(For more pictures of the set designs, see my interview with the conductor.)

Don Giovanni, Royal Opera, 12 September 2008

Royal Opera House

Don Giovanni – Simon Keenlyside
Donna Anna – Marina Poplavskaya
Don Ottavio – Ramón Vargas
Donna Elvira – Joyce DiDonato
Leporello – Kyle Ketelsen
Masetto – Robert Gleadow
Zerlina – Miah Persson
Commendatore – Eric Halfvarson

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
The Royal Opera Chorus (chorus master: Renato Balsadonna)
Sir Charles Mackerras (conductor)

Francesca Zambello (director)
Duncan Macfarland (associate director and revival choreographer)
Maria Björnson (designs)
Paul Pyant (lighting)
Stephen Mear (choreography)

I have until now remained steadfastly sceptical, or downright hostile, concerning Sir Charles Mackerras in Mozart. His widely-praised Figaro earlier this year had seemed to me mercilessly hard-driven and often far too fast for the singers to be able to project the words, let alone the music. In a sense, it had mirrored David McVicar’s irritating, manic production, but this had seemed more coincidence than shared (seriously flawed) approach. I retain my incomprehension at why one would employ natural brass instruments; their rasping sound, especially during the Overture, adds nothing but coarseness. And there were occasions when I worried about speeds. To stick with the Overture – and its counterpart in the Stone Guest Scene – one can play alla breve without robbing the music of its cataclysmic grandeur. Here it sounded more like the opening of Mozart’s D minor piano concerto than the voice of something eternal and unworldly: not an uninteresting link to make but nevertheless robbing the music of its astounding proto-Romanticism. Where would Romanticism, let alone Romantic music, be without Don Giovanni? There is no wonder that E.T.A. Hoffmann delivered a panegyric to this ‘opera of all operas’. However, there was much to admire elsewhere. Whereas the strings had often sounded wiry and under-nourished in Figaro, that was not the case here; nor did they stint unduly on vibrato. I should have preferred greater orchestral weight, as Daniel Barenboim had provided in a miraculous Berlin performance last December, but at least lightness was not now confused with inconsequentiality. Tempi were mostly sensible – and varied. There was even at times, if not so often as I might have liked, a graceful yielding I should have considered inconceivable from prior experience. Perhaps above all there was a dramatic drive, an attentiveness to the drama, which I had previously found to be confused with a headlong rush to the finishing line.

However, I was a little disappointed that we heard the ‘traditional’ composite version of the work. I am no purist when it comes to such matters and appreciate that many singers will relish, perhaps even insist upon, their additional arias. There may even be occasions when the production facilitates use of this version (thankfully without the dreadful, rarely-heard duet between Zerlina and Leporello), although not here. The Prague version, however, almost always maintains a dramatic superiority over that for Vienna or any composite. Additional arias, however heart-rendingly beautiful, undeniably hold up the action. To use the composite version also seems to me to sit a little uneasily with any claims to ‘authenticity’ – although I suppose the accusation might well be turned round upon me, to say that preference for Prague might sit uneasily with reverence for tradition.

There remain many conductors from the past and a few from the present whom I should prefer to hear in Mozart, ranging from Furtwängler, Klemperer, Böhm, and Giulini, to Barenboim, Colin Davis, and Riccardo Muti. (These are examples, not an exhaustive list.) Yet I shall now be interested rather than reluctant to hear Mackerras again. He was of course helped by the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House. It might not have sounded as it had for Così fan tutte under Davis – never have I heard a better Mozart performance, although it was betrayed by a crass production – but there was some fine playing, not least from the woodwind. I may disagree with Mackerras, as I often do with Nikolaus Harnoncourt; that should not entail automatic disregard. Contrast this with the cynical, marketing-led exhibitionism of, say, a René Jacobs or a Roger Norrington: ‘The wisdom of tradition is naught. Let us strike up a brazenly ugly noise; let us rid the music of any meaning, let alone beauty, and show the world or at least the gullible how it must be done. In other words, let us create a provocation.’ The distinction between musical intelligence and charlatanry is clear.

There was certainly no charlatanry when it came to the singers. Simon Keenlyside offered a scrupulously musical and sometimes seductive Giovanni. I suspect that I might have been more enthusiastic, had I not experienced Erwin Schrott’s assumption of the role in the same production a little over a year ago. I am not convinced that Keenlyside is so at home with the demonic and Faustian as with the various guises of touching naïveté required in such varied roles as Pelléas, Papageno, or Billy Budd, yet there was nothing really to complain of here. Kyle Ketelsen was at least as good as he was last year, if anything better. Those – and I have heard them – who claim that Leporello is but a stock buffo character should have heard and seen him, to appreciate how the genius of Mozart’s music transforms an ordinary servant into a human being. There was once again a more or less perfect balance between comedy, charisma, and class struggle. His shaping of the musical lines was as impressive as Keenlyside’s. Marina Poplavskaya was certainly vastly improved upon last year, when I had heard her step in at the last minute for the second act. Her tuning on this occasion was secure, but I still missed a sense of style. I can imagine her in Verdi roles, or as Tatyana, but here the line is too full of steel and somewhat lacking in grace. Joyce DiDonato presented quite a revisionist Elvira. There was none of the usual eroticism, such as we heard last year from Ana María Martínez. Yet in its place there was a striking transformation from a wronged yet determined woman, with none of the essentialist hysterical caricature that often characterises the role, to someone who really is driven mad by her experience. I suspect that DiDonato’s experience in Baroque opera informed this portrayal, as it did her flawless coloratura, even in a swift ‘Mi tradi’ that pushed towards the bounds of the acceptable in tempo. Ramón Vargas was a more Latin-sounding Ottavio than I am used to, but there is nothing wrong with that. He sang with great musicality, quickly recovering from a slight difficulty in a treacherous passage from ‘Il mio tesoro’. Robert Gleadow proved a fine Masetto, never sacrificing musical line for peasant gruffness, yet touching in the artful simplicity of his portrayal. As Zerlina, Miah Persson was quite outstanding: maintaining throughout a beautiful, sensitively spun line and supplying plenty of the eroticism lacking from Elvira. Only Eric Halfvarson was disappointing as a lightweight Commendatore.

That leaves the production. It has not improved with age. To stress the Christianity and indeed the Catholicism of the work and its predecessors is an excellent idea, which one might have expected to have represented some sort of norm, though alas not. Yet nothing is really done with this crucial background; instead, we have once again a backdrop of religious tat and that is just about it. Lavish and somewhat garish designs add to the feel of an upmarket musical, almost as much as in Francesca Zambello’s Carmen, also for the Royal Opera. If this is what attracts customers – judging by the Philistine applause following the stage pyrotechnics of Giovanni’s descent into Hell, I fear that it might – then let them stay at home. As for the confusion regarding the lack of a statue – to which Leporello nevertheless sings – and the appearance of a large, pointing, National Lottery finger, I despair. Producing Don Giovanni is an extremely difficult task, almost as difficult as performing it. The downright vulgarity of ‘bread and circuses’ is not an answer. Still, the music was the thing – and it was very good.

Don Giovanni, Royal Opera, 4 July 2007

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Don Giovanni

Royal Opera House, Wednesday 4 July 2007

Don Giovanni - Erwin Schrott
Commendatore - Robert Lloyd
Donna Anna - Anna Netrebko and Marina Poplavskaya
Don Ottavio - Michael Schade
Donna Elvira - Ana María Martínez
Leporello - Kyle Ketelsen
Masetto - Matthew Rose
Zerlina - Sarah Fox

Orchestra and Chorus of the Royal Opera House
David Syrus (conductor)

Francesca Zambello (director)
Duncan Macfarland (revival director)

The Overture, and especially the first section of the Overture, did not augur well. Strings sounded wiry and anaemic; the natural brass (why, oh why...?!) sounded as it perforce would: alternating between feeble and rasping; there was little space (not just a matter of tempo) to breathe. Part of this, I suspect, was a product of David Syrus taking over simply for the final two performances, and therefore dealing with an orchestra versed in a reading that in large part would have been Ivor Bolton's. Bolton has been a curious case when I have heard him conduct Mozart: a haplessly frenetic Mass in C minor in which the Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra was split between glorious woodwind and the rest as signalled above, a surprisingly fine Entführung (aided by a superb production), and a Symphony no.34, which, despite a few irritating 'period' touches and a recklessly fast 'slow' movement, displayed elsewhere a festive weight that would not have sounded out of place chez Klemperer or Colin Davis. After the Overture, however, things settled down. Whilst this in no sense ranked as a great interpretation - prepare to forget Furtwängler, Giulini, Klemperer, Böhm, Davis, Haitink, Muti, et al. - it supported the singers well and rarely drew narcissistic attention to itself. How much of this was Syrus and how much Bolton is impossible, at least for me, to say. I should add that parts of the Stone Guest scene, sadly, reverted to the hard-driven, underpowered tendencies of the Overture. And the natural brass remained, well, like natural brass: nothing could be done about that...

The cast was generally fine. Anna Netrebko, her cold notwithstanding, managed to convey dignity and glamour (and fine musicality) as Donna Anna. Unfortunately, her illness rendered her incapable of singing for the second act. Her last-minute replacement did well enough under the circumstances, though her tuning was often alarmingly awry, and there was little attempt at modulation of her rather strident voice. Michael Schade acquitted himself with honour in the thankless role of Don Ottavio. Ana María Martínez presented a wholly credible Elvira - and one who was far more than a wronged harridan. In 'Mi tradi', she lent a suitably erotic, proto-Wagnerian or -Straussian element to her interpretation, without ever overdoing such premonitions. Bringing off Leporello is often difficult, but Kyle Ketelsen had clearly thought through the balance of comedy, charisma, and class struggle, and was unfailingly musical in his shaping of lines.

This, however, was Erwin Schrott's show. I can say without hesitation that, of the various Giovannis have seen on stage, his was the most complete. He exuded charisma through stage presence and through his dangerous, honeyed tones, hued with a quicksilver, predatory dialectic between darkness and light. One felt that he could have had anyone in the theatre. His libertine defiance was duly heroic, although the orchestra and its direction unhelpfully threatened to run away with themselves during his final moments. Nevertheless, Schrott's confrontation with Robert Lloyd's predictably fine Commendatore was gripping enough for Mozart's truly extraordinary re-dramatisation (one almost dare call it intensification) of the Fall. It would take a sterner, more puritanical constitution than mine not to consider - and perhaps rather more than consider - siding with the Devil on the strength of this magnificent performance.

This brings me to the production. Francesca Zambello was clearly thinking along the right lines, in presenting a world suffused with Catholicism. Everything about Mozart's opera - and in this, he goes far beyond da Ponte's libretto - shows awareness of the theological stakes, which could hardly be higher. Unfortunately, Zambello, as is her wont, seemed too easily seduced by concessions to theatrical spectacle, not least the fires of the climactic scene. More worryingly, the 'religion' remained stubbornly at the level of religious tat. Whilst there may be good reasons for displaying highly visible manifestations of such Mediterranean piety, it should never be an end in itself. This was a pity, because the approach promised a great deal. It could have strengthened Schrott's astonishing portrayal, rather than provided a merely picturesque backdrop thereto. This was undoubtedly, however, a Don Giovanni to remember, if largely for its hero.