The idea of transporting
a play or an opera in time and/or
location has been eagerly debated
for many years. Whether either camp
- the sticklers for a historically
correct performance versus the modernizers
- has been more successful in convincing
the followers of the opposite opinion
is hard to say. In any event it
seems that the number of modernized
productions has been escalating
lately. I can’t say that I support
either camp wholeheartedly but I
see no point in modernizing for
the sake of modernizing. There has
to be some point in the refurbishing
and it has to make sense. Customs,
society, fashion, morals change
but the text of a 200-year-old opera
refers to the situation when it
was written and it takes a lot to
make it fit into a 21
st
century setting. It may work but
it may also end up in disaster.
In the present
box we encounter Jossi Wieler’s
and Sergio Morabito’s view of the
three Mozart-Da Ponte operas as
presented during the last two seasons
at Het Muziektheater in Amsterdam.
According to the blurb on the box
they have set Così fan
tutte in a 1960s youth hostel;
looks like a seaside resort to me.
Le nozze di Figaro plays
in a car showroom (!) while in Don
Giovanni the stage is occupied
with beds of varying models and
sizes and the eight characters are,
with few exceptions, on stage all
the time. Even the Commendatore
lies dead on his bed from the first
scene when he is murdered until
the scene in the churchyard where
he is - according to Da Ponte’s
libretto – a marble statue and in
the very end appears at Don Giovanni’s
dinner.
In all three operas
disguise plays an important role.
I can believe that in the eighteenth
century, when everything was much
darker and dimmer some of it might
have been believable but shouldn’t
Fiordiligi and Dorabella have recognized
their fiancés in spite of
the Albanian costumes? Shouldn’t
Figaro and the Count have found
out immediately who was who; Figaro
does rather quickly? And shouldn’t
Donna Elvira have been able to tell
Leporello from Don Giovanni, whom
she had known intimately? Wieler
and Morabito take lightly on this
and skip most of the masking altogether.
Despina in various roles as doctor
or notary is actually in
some kind of disguise but easy to
penetrate anyway. The moral in all
this could be: if you want to be
deceived you will be deceived.
Of the three operas
Così fan tutte works
well in its new setting. The revolving
scene elegantly changes scenes,
the actors are young – even Don
Alfonso created by Garry Magee is
at most early middle aged and has
an affair, it seems, with Despina.
It is well acted and well sung and
the direction is ever-inventive
and fresh. Without exception the
casting is superb with the actors
looking their roles and several
of them appearing in more than one
production.
Le nozze di
Figaro at first seemed completely
out of phase with the libretto with
a posh green sports car centre-stage
and the mechanic under it turns
out to be Cherubino. But the freshness
of the approach and the wholehearted
acting won me over quite soon and
once again one has to admire the
invention. The garden scene is shown
mainly in filmed sequences and may
be incomprehensible for a newcomer;
the majority of the audience on
site as well as intended buyers
of the DVDs probably know the story.
What is incomprehensible
is when there is a lack of correspondence
between what people sing and what
happens on stage. In Figaro
the Countess says to Susanna: ‘Take
my guitar and accompany him (Cherubino)"
but she doesn’t, and in Don Giovanni
there are numerous examples of this
discordance. When Don says to Leporello:
‘Serve more wine’ he serves it himself,
when Figaro wants to taste the pheasant
he eats melon. I could list many
more instances and my question is:
What’s the point in this? ‘Nothing
is what it seems to be’ or ‘Don’t
trust a person’s words, trust his
actions’?
Don Giovanni
is the work in this trilogy that
I can’t digest in this absurdist
setting. It not only feels incoherent,
in spite of the secluded milieu,
but is also brutal, cynical and
vulgar. Leporello masturbates, obviously
frustrated by his master’s sexual
activities, Don Giovanni rapes Zerlina
in front of all the people, staining
her white dress as well as his own
trousers. There is no lack of interesting
details and solutions and the acting,
as in the other two operas, is brilliant
but in the end I felt slightly nauseated.
Others may feel differently.
Musically these
are rather full versions, though
there are also some cuts. In Le
nozze di Figaro Marcellina and
Don Basilio are granted their arias
in act four and in Don Giovanni
the Zerlina-Leporello duet Per
queste tue manine is included
in a kind of torture scene where
the young peasant girl takes revenge
on the male sex for what she has
been subjected to. The secco recitatives
are accompanied by guitar in Così
fan tutte, on a synthesizer
in Figaro and by virginal
and cello in Don Giovanni.
Again a fresh approach. Ingo Metzmacher
leads vivid performances though
never rushes things.
Danielle de Niese
is superb as Despina and Susanna,
vocally and visually: expressive,
alive, charming and sparkling. Maite
Beaumont is two different characters
as Dorabella: hysterical, shy, impulsive
– and Cherubino: youthfully vivid
and agitated. In both roles her
singing is magnificent. Luca Pisaroni
is a virile Guglielmo and a dramatic
Figaro. His darkish baritone is
perfectly suited to both roles and
he nuances his arias to perfection.
Garry Magee is vocally impressive
in two so different roles as the
worldly-wise Don Alfonso and the
explosive Count Almaviva and acts
with philosophical distinction as
the former, haughty nobility as
the latter. Norman Shankle is a
more powerful Ferrando than most
and he also makes the comprimario
role of Don Curzio in Figaro.
The only member of the Così
ensemble, who doesn’t appear
elsewhere in the cycle is Sally
Matthews, who takes some time to
warm up but in her second act aria
she is on form: great singing and
acting there.
In Figaro we
encounter Cellia Costea as
a truly impressive Countess. Her
Dove sono in act three is
one of the best things in the opera.
Mario Luperi, slim and well-mannered,
is a fine Bartolo and a dynamic
Commendatore in Don Giovanni,
and Charlotte Margiono makes a magnificent
Marcellina. Her fourth act aria
is super. She is a show-stealer
also as Donna Elvira, even though
her singing is a little less assured.
Marcel Reijans acts and sings well
as a carefree Don Basilio and is
a real jerk as Don Ottavio (as he
should be), one of the sloppiest
characters in any Mozart opera.
But this spineless nobleman has,
in a conglomerate of the Prague
and Vienna versions, two lovely
arias and Dalla sua pace
is sung with lyrical glow and he
is vocally virile in Il mio tesoro.
Floor van der Sluis is fresh as
dew as Barbarina, looking no older
than seventeen and Roberto Accurso
is an Antonio not to be tampered
with – considerably more sober than
Mozart’s gardener.
In Don Giovanni
he is a jealous hot-tempered Masetto,
ready to flog his fiancée
with his belt whenever he is suspicious
of her virtue. She, Zerlina, is
rather flirtatious and flattered
by Don Giovanni’s advances but she
has a heart of gold and Cora Burggraaf
makes her a blonde, warm and slightly
naïve peasant girl. The Don
himself is here a middle-aged, greyish
cynic and Pietro Spagnoli portrays
him superbly in a many-faceted reading.
He dominates the stage with naturalness
and he sings the part extremely
well. His manservant Leporello is
a weakling, shivering with fright,
convincingly played by José
Fardilha, whose singing is one of
the greatest pleasures in this generally
well sung production. Myrtò
Papatanasiu, finally, is a noble
looking Donna Anna, and she makes
a believable portrait of this complex
woman. She is vocally great, especially
in that trial of strength, the big
second act aria.
So there we are:
musically these are three very good
performances, the acting is uniformly
fine but the stagings are controversial.
I liked Così from
beginning to end, I had some doubts
about Figaro but eventually
capitulated. I could appreciate
many details in Don Giovanni
but the whole concept seemed wrong.
Göran Forsling