For many members of a modern audience schooled in realism, the enjoyment of opera frequently involves a considerable degree of mental adjustment. Many operas are so melodramatic in plot, so outlandish in the characters they portray, so strange and old-fashioned in their social attitudes that to appreciate them fully without groaning aloud, we have to agree to make special efforts to suspend disbelief for the sake of the wonderful music.
Curiously enough, this is never a problem with the operas of Mozart. The dramatic situation encountered in The Magic Flute, for example, seems fantastic to the naked eye, but the characters are so full of human qualities, the music is so suggestive and convincing that we are moved, delighted and deeply involved. Mozart, at once the most sublime and the most human of composers, speaks directly to us through time.
The same is true of Don Giovanni which, at first glance, might seem pretty far-fetched. After all, an important character is a marble statue that comes to life and the title character is a lecher who claims to have bedded thousands of women. Nevertheless, within the extreme situation portrayed in the opera, Don Giovanni exists at a deeply human level. Mozart's music and da Ponte's libretto combine to reveal a world that we can understand and recognize as our own.
The opera Don Giovanni is a gem of many facets and, like all great works of art, it can speak to us in a variety of ways. An earlier generation might have seen it as a parable about the wages of sin, which may account for the fact that for many years in the 19th and 20th centuries, productions of the opera frequently ended with the Don's dramatic descent into the inferno.
Director Roman Hurko's handsome and very modern production for the Vancouver Opera includes Mozart's original ending for the opera, in which the all-too-human characters who have survived their encounter with rampant sexuality - Don Giovanni's and their own - attempt to discover a moral or a meaning in all that has happened to them. This is the equivocal 1787 ending, and in this production, it seems curiously up to date. The inclusion of a bevy of seemingly naked women impersonating the flames of Hell adds a strangely
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This is a handsome, gorgeously sung production that has a running time of three hours and 15 minutes but seems much shorter. Indeed, the very speed of this production seems its only major flaw. This headlong pace - you can almost hear the stopwatch ticking - may enhance and underscore the opera buffa, black-comedy approach, but a slightly less hectic speed from time to time, the occasional pause for breath, might have served the production well and added only a few extra minutes.
Don Ottavio's great aria Il Mio Tesoro, for example, certainly calls for a brisk treatment, but on this occasion the outstandingly gifted tenor Benjamin Butterfield, who sang it beautifully, occasionally gave the impression that he was being prodded forward a bit too briskly for comfort by conductor Steuart Bedford's baton. It would have been a treat to dwell a bit more lovingly on this golden moment, a brief wallow in the glow of Mozartian brilliance.
A strong, well-balanced and richly gibed cast helped bring this production to vivid life. There were particularly splendid performances, both musically and dramatically, from Taras Kulish as Leporello and Peter Coleman-Wright as the Don. Helena Kaupova was a memorable Donna Anna and Cheryl Barker gave great value as Donna Elvira. Mariateresa Magisano was a bright and vocally appealing Zerlina and Sergei Stilmachenko did some fine work as Masetto. The remarkable Gary Relyea made an impressive Commendatore.
The orchestra under Steuart Bedford matched the singers. The handsome and innovative sets by Claude Girard and Bernard Uzan of l'Opera Montreal worked splendidly, their stone ramparts moving silently about the stage when required in a manner that made the appearance of the walking statue at the end of Act 2 not all that surprising.
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