Don Giovanni, English National Opera, 17 October 2012

The Coliseum

Don Giovanni – Iain Paterson
Leporello – Darren Jeffery
Donna Anna – Katherine Broderick
Don Ottavio – Ben Johnson
Donna Elvira – Sarah Redgwick
Commendatore – Matthew Best
Zerlina – Sarah Tynan
Masetto – John Molloy

Rufus Norris (director)
Ian MacNeil (set designs)
Nicky Gillibrand (costumes)
Paul Andreson (lighting)
Jonathan Lunn (movement)
Finn Ross (projections)

Chorus of the English National Opera (chorus master: Martin Fitzpatrick)
Orchestra of the English National Opera
Edward Gardner (conductor)

Zerlina (Sarah Tynan), Don Giovanni (Iain Paterson), Donna Elvira (Sarah Redgwick)
Images: Richard Hubert Smith

 

Some especially puerile, needlessly irritating, marketing, involving pictures of condom packets – oddly chosen in so many ways, since few people find contraceptives especially erotic, and Don Giovanni would seem an unlikely candidate to have employed  them – had attended the run-up to this revival of Rufus Norris’s production of Don Giovanni. In 2010, it registered as the worst staging I had ever seen: a fiercely contested category, when one considers that it includes Francesca Zambello’s mindless farrago across Covent Garden at the Royal Opera – now, may the Commendatore be thanked, consigned to the flames of Hell. (Kasper Holten, Director of Opera, is said to have insisted, having viewed it in horror, that the sets be destroyed, lest it never return.) There were grounds for the odd glimmer of hope; Norris was said to have revised the production in the face of its well-nigh universal mauling from critics and other audience members alike. Yet the marketing did little to allay one’s fears, especially when reading the bizarre description on ENO’s website of a ‘riveting romp [that] follows the last twenty-four hours in the life of the legendary Lothario’. Something really ought to be done about whomever is involved in publicising productions; for, irrespective of the quality of what we see on stage, they  more often than not end up sounding merely ludicrous: in this case, more Carry On Seville than one of the greatest musical dramas in the repertory. Even if one were willing thus to disparage Da Ponte – and I am certainly not – does Mozart’s re-telling of the Fall in any sense characterised by the phrase ‘riveting romp’?

How, then, had Norris’s revisions turned out? Early on, I felt there was a degree of improvement. The weird obsession with electricity – certainly not of the musical variety – had gone, but not to be replaced by anything else. Certain but only certain of the most bizarre impositions had gone, or been weeded out, yet not always thoroughly enough. For instance, there was a strange remnant of the already strange moment when, towards the end of the Act Two sextet, people began to strip off, when Don Ottavio – an ‘uptight fiancé’, according to the company website – carefully removed his shoes and socks. No one reacted, and a few minutes later – I think, during Donna Anna’a ‘Non mi dir’ – he put them back on again. Otherwise, the hideous sets and other designs remain as they were, though one might claim a degree of contemporary ‘relevance’ in that Don Giovanni’s dated ‘leisure wear’ now brings with it unfortunate resonances of the late Jimmy Savile. Alas, nothing is made of the similarity. The flat designed as if by a teenage girl, full of hearts and pink balloons, remains; as does the building that resembles a community centre. Leporello still appears to be a tramp. There are no discernible attempts to reflect Da Ponte’s, let alone Mozart’s, careful societal distinctions and there is no sign whatsoever that anyone has understood that Don Giovanni is a religious drama or it is nothing. Norris has clearly opted for ‘nothing’.

 

There is, believe it or not, a villain perhaps more pernicious still. Jeremy Sams’s dreadful, attention-seeking English translation does its best to live up to the ‘riveting romp’ description. A few, very loud, members of the audience did their best to disrupt what little ‘action’ there was by laughing uproariously after every single line: the very instance of a rhyme is intrinsically hilarious to some, it would seem. A catalogue of Sams’s sins – sin has gone by the board in the drama itself – would take far longer than Leporello’s aria. But I no more understand why the countries in that aria should be transformed into months – ‘ma in Ispagna’ becomes ‘March and April’ – than I do why Zerlina was singing about owning a pharmacy in ‘Vedrai carino,’ or whatever it became in this ‘version’. It is barely a translation, but nor is it any sense a reimagination along the brilliant lines of the recent gay Don Giovanni at Heaven; it merely caters towards those with no more elevated thoughts than Zerlina going down on her knees, about which we are informed time and time again, lest anyone should have missed such ‘humour’. The lack of respect accorded to Da Ponte borders upon the sickening.

Edward Gardner led a watered-down Harnoncourt-style performance. At first it might even have seemed exciting, but it soon became wearing, mistaking the aggressively loud for the dramatically potent. Where was the repose, let alone the well-nigh unbearable beauty, in Mozart’s score? A peculiar ‘version’ was employed, in that Elvira retained both her arias, whereas Ottavio only had his in the first act. On stage, Prague remains preferable every time, despite the painful musical losses its adoption entails; sadly, few conductors seem to bother.

Donna Anna (Katherine Broderick), Zerlina, Leporello (Darren Jeffery),
Masetto (John Molloy), Don Ottavio (Ben Johnson)

Iain Paterson remains bizarrely miscast in the title role, entirely bereft of charisma. Darren Jeffery’s Leporello was bluff and dull in tone. (How one longed for Erwin Schrott – in either role, or both!) Katherine Broderick was too often shrill and squally as Donna Anna, and her stage presence was less then convincing, shuffling on and off, without so much as a hint of seria imperiousness. Her ‘uptight fiancé’ was sung well enough, by Ben Johnson, though to my ears, his instrument is too much of an ‘English tenor’ to sound at home in Mozart.  Sarah Redgwick’s Elvira was probably the best of the bunch, perhaps alongside Matthew Best’s Commendatore, but anyone would have struggled in this production, with these words. Elvira more or less managed to seem a credible character, thanks to Redgwick’s impressive acting skills, quite an achievement in the circumstances. Sarah Tynan made little impression either way as Zerlina, though she had far more of a voice than the dry-, even feeble-toned Masetto of John Molloy: surely another instance of miscasting.

ENO had a viscerally exciting production, genuinely daring, almost worthy of Giovanni’s kinetic energy. It seems quite incomprehensible why anyone should have elected to ditch the coke-fuelled orgiastic extravagance of Calixto Bieito – now there is a properly Catholic sensibility – for Rufus Norris. whose lukewarm response at the curtain calls was more genuinely amusing than anything we had seen or heard on stage. Maybe the contraceptive imagery was judicious after all.

Don Giovanni, English National Opera, 6 November 2010

The Coliseum

(sung in English)

(Images: Donald Cooper)

Don Giovanni – Iain Paterson
Commendatore – Matthew Best
Donna Anna – Katherine Broderick
Don Ottavio – Robert Murray
Donna Elvira – Sarah Redgwick
Leporello – Brindley Sherratt
Masetto – John Molloy
Zerlina – Sarah Tynan

Rufus Norris (director)
Ian McNeil (set designs)
Nicky Gillibrand (costumes)
Mimi Jordan Sherin (lighting)
Jonathan Lunn (movement)
Finn Ross (projections)

Chorus of the English National Opera (chorus master: Martin Merry)
Orchestra of the English National Opera
Kirill Karabits (conductor)


I was unsure whether things could get much worse for Don Giovanni, following the Deutsche Oper’s new production from Roland Schwab. They could and they did. Rufus Norris’s debut as an opera director lacks even the occasional glimpses of coherence vouchsafed in Berlin. The setting seems to vary, or is it just unclear? We seem in general to be somewhere mid-twentieth-century: perhaps the 1950s, I thought, though it did not really seem to matter. A vulgar flat, apparently done up by a teenage girl – full of hearts and pink balloons – sometimes does service as a setting; sometimes there is a wall; and at one point it appears that the action has shifted to a community centre. Nicky Gillibrand’s costumes are as mixed as Ian McNeil’s sets, and often simply hideous. Leporello appears to be a tramp, though I could not work out how this might fit with anything or anyone else.

There is no sense of danger, nor indeed any sense of who these people might be and why we should show any interest in them. I wondered whether the metallic semi-circle that often hovered in the air might be a reference to a circle of the Inferno. Perhaps it was, but when it came to the Stone Guest Scene, it did not seem to act as such; instead, Don Giovanni touched it and appeared to be electrocuted. (There were occasional 'electrical' sounds throughout, to uncertain purpose.) Moreover, whereas everything previously appeared to be presented – it was almost impossible to be sure – as something bordering on desperately unfunny farce, that all suddenly disappeared during the Stone Guest Scene itself, when some orange-clad monk-like figures arrived on stage. It was a challenge – and a challenge that did not seem worth the effort –to connect what we saw on stage with the libretto, let alone Mozart’s music. I never thought I should find myself saying this, but I actually preferred Francesca Zambello’s vacuous Royal Opera offering. What a pity, then, when ENO had a truly extraordinary production on its books from Calixto Bieito, a production that scintillatingly grappled with the prospect of a life and a society on the edge of the most terrifying abyss. This seemed to cross the worst of Zambello with the sub-farcical reductionism of Barrie Kosky’s dreadful Marriage of Figaro for the Komische Oper, Berlin. To add insult to injury, a blinding blue light, reflected – accidentally, I assume, though surely this ought to have been checked – from a stage mirror made sitting through part of the first-act finale a physical ordeal. Various patrons, when able to distract themselves from heavy-duty coughing, were compelled to hold their programmes over their faces. In the circumstances, perhaps that was not so great an ordeal.

Musically, there was more to enjoy. Kirill Karabits conducted a generally well-mannered performance, rarely exciting but with an attention to musical values sadly lacking in the stage direction. Phrasing was carefully handled; tempi were mostly well chosen and notably lacking in weird variation or other would-be iconoclasm. The ENO Orchestra played beautifully, especially its woodwind, though it could often sound a little under-powered: a large space such as this really needs more strings. In any case, this is a vigorous score, indeed a dæmonic one; beauty is necessary but not sufficient. The Stone Guest Scene, however, and its presentiment at the beginning of the Overture, were taken faster than I have ever heard: an eccentric and unwelcome contrast, even allowing for the fashionable nature of an alla breve reading.

Unfortunately, Iain Paterson proved wholly lacking in charisma in the title role. Granted, the production did him no favours, but even so, there was not the slightest sense of menace or allure in his reading. He seemed utterly miscast. One does not have to be Christopher Maltman, let alone the stupendous Erwin Schrott, though it certainly helps, but one needs to suggest and rather more than suggest what the attraction might be. Likewise, Brindley Sherratt’s Leporello was hamstrung by the production, yet his delivery – not least the all-purpose ‘regional’ pronunciation – was often coarse and his general assumption of the role unconvincing. John Molloy’s Masetto too often sacrificed pitch to rhythm, most glaringly when he first appeared on stage. Some may also have found his 'Irish' – or was it West Country, for it seemed to vary?  – delivery irritating and unnecessary.

The rest of the cast was pretty good, however. Sarah Redgwick was a late substitute for the ailing Rebecca Evans. Save for a little trouble with coloratura in ‘Mi tradì’, one would never have known. She alternated between pride and vulnerability, convinced on stage insofar as the production would permit her, and presented a properly Mozartian vocal line. Katherine Broderick’s Donna Anna evinced all of those virtues and more: an outstanding performance, which made me long to hear her in Italian. The accuracy and warmth of her second-act aria put a recent Salzburg Festival incarnation to shame, even if focus could sometimes wander. Sarah Tynan's Zerlina was finely sung and sexy too. Robert Murray was a sincere Ottavio; the role is thankless, but his delivery did not lack beauty of tone. Matthew Best was a powerful, sonorous Commendatore; again, if only he had been afforded a different setting…

If, however, I were given to violent thoughts when it came to the production, they became positively – negatively? – terroristic when enduring Jeremy Sams’s translation. I do not think I have previously encountered a translation that so wilfully draws attention to itself and away both from libretto and score. At least bad, it is full of jarring colloquialisms and forced, cringe-worthy rhymes, with occasional, bizarre reversions to something more literal. (Perhaps they were intended to be ‘meaningful’, but it was difficult to discern any pattern.) Much, however, was wholesale reinvention. Leporello’s Catalogue Aria lost any indication of geography, let alone the correct numbers. Italy, France, and Spain were all gone, replaced by months of the year. Why? Was it solely to annoy? Some of us happen to consider Lorenzo Da Ponte a more than able librettist; might he not perhaps be accorded a little more respect than that? Somewhere the word ‘spreadsheet’ appeared too, which elicited widespread hilarity amongst a particularly noisy audience. (It was difficult for someone to walk on stage, however nonchalantly, without provoking hysterical guffaws from some.) At another point – I forget when, but am pretty sure it was somewhere during the first act – a ‘jacuzzi’ appeared in the text, the sole apparent reason being to enable another ‘hilarious’ rhyme, with ‘floozy’. Perhaps worst of all, and once again with no discernible justification, the plot was changed, so that instead of having encountered one of Leporello’s sweethearts, he had flirted with his manservant’s sister instead. These are but a few examples. Da Ponte deserved much better.

ENO, please may we have Bieito’s Don Giovanni back? It may be flawed, but it is uncompromising in its vision and provides the opportunity for serious musical drama.