Sex and Violence
Graham Vick's 'Don Giovanni',
reviewed by GIUSEPPE PENNISI
reviewed by GIUSEPPE PENNISI
There are times when
even a Commander of the British Empire can lose a
battle. Graham Vick, winner of eight
Abbiati Prizes (the Italian music critics' award) was booed for
his Don Giovanni at the 27 September afternoon performance at the Teatro Sociale
di Como and also at the performance I attended, on the evening of 4 October 2014, which inaugurated the opera season at the Pergolesi Theatre in Jesi. The boos were
clearly addressed to Vick and his set designer Stuart Nunn, because the small orchestra (I Pomeriggi Musicali
di Milano), the conductor José Luis Gomez-Rios
and the young cast were all warmly
applauded.
The basic idea of the production is sound: to entrust it to a
well-known stage director — Vick has signed five different productions of the opera over the
last twenty years — and to a well-selected young cast on a cost-sharing basis between ten theatres (eight in Northern and
Central Italy and two in France) with the intention of
showing high standard performances even in provincial theatres.
The same approach is being applied to Jacques Offenbach's Les Contes de
Hoffmann ... hopefully with better results.
Don Giovanni is often reviewed in
this magazine — most recently in Existential Tragedy, 24
May 2014 — and so this dramma giocoso
('playful or joyful drama') needs no introduction: it is an apologue of a
long day's journey towards the death of a rake who, in his
desperate loneliness, attempts unsuccessfully to seduce three women before being dispatched
to hell. The key note is D —
major for Don Giovanni and his main antagonist (the Commendatore) and minor for all the
others, still linked to Italian seventeenth century operatic conventions.
 Alessia Nadin as Zerlina, Riccardo Fassi as Masetto, Gezim Myshketa as Don Giovanni, Federica Lombardi as Donna Elvira, Giovanni Sebastiano Sala as Don Ottavio and Valentina Mastrangelo as Donna Anna in Graham Vick's production of Mozart's Don Giovanni at the Pergolesi Theatre in Jesi. Photo © 2014 Foto Binci. Click on the image for higher resolution |
Vick sets the plot in our own time — as is
often done — and more specifically in a sordid banlieue of any big town where sex and violence
are the name of the game. The production photographs are
quite explicit.
 Valentina Mastrangelo as Donna Anna and Gezim Myshketa in the title role of Graham Vick's production of Mozart's Don Giovanni at the Pergolesi Theatre in Jesi. Photo © 2014 Foto Binci. Click on the image for higher resolution |
All the protagonists and the chorus are sex starved, and
attempt to satiate their appetites in all possible positions — especially in
the party scene at the end of the first
act. The protagonist is so obsessed that he
even has sex with Don Ottavio and touches the front
and the back of Leporello any time he has the
opportunity. Especially lurid is the violence towards women.
This is all the more
surprising because at the time of composing Don Giovanni, Mozart was a member of a
rather strict Roman Catholic association. Thus he
really meant to show how a dissolute life is damned. Even though
the Prague version is chosen for the
production (where the rake's indictment by the whole of society is more explicit), at
the end, whilst the other singers undress themselves in
front of the audience, Don Giovanni sits
comfortably, and smiling, among the spectators.
 A scene from the finale of Act I of Graham Vick's production of Mozart's Don Giovanni at the Pergolesi Theatre in Jesi. Photo © 2014 Foto Binci. Click on the image for higher resolution |
I may not have
understood the inner meaning of the staging, but I
was not alone. I cannot accept Vick's often-repeated statement in interviews
that his direction is addressed to the
younger generations with a view to bringing them back to opera houses.
Fortunately, the music
was quite good. The orchestra mirrored that of the first performance in Prague,
and José Luis Gomez-Rios obtained excellent sonorities and a good balance between the pit and the
confusing stage — and that's being polite. In the cast, the men — Gezim
Myshketa as Don Giovanni, Giovanni Sebastiano Sala as Don Ottavio, Mariano
Buccino as the Commendatore, Andrea Concetti as Leporello and Riccardo Fassi as
Masetto — were a couple of
notches better than the women — Federica Lombardi as Donna Elvira, Valentina Mastrangelo
as Donna Anna and Alessia Nadin as Zerlina.
 Riccardo Fassi as Masetto and Alessia Nadin as Zerlina in Graham Vick's production of Mozart's Don Giovanni at the Pergolesi Theatre in Jesi. Photo © 2014 Foto Binci. Click on the image for higher resolution |
The tour is long, and a true
commander will adjust his strategy if the first battles do not go as well as
expected.
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