MIKE SILVERMAN, Associated Press, December 29, 2002
Mozart's "Don Giovanni" is on everyone's list of greatest operas, but performances that do justice to its musical glories are surprisingly elusive. So it proved when the Metropolitan Opera revived its 1990 Franco Zeffirelli production Friday night.
But even if the whole added up to less than the sum of its parts, there were many individual pleasures to be enjoyed in the tale of history's most famous serial seducer and three of the women he encounters on the way to his undoing.
Among the assets was soprano Rebecca Evans, as a bright, spunky Zerlina, the peasant girl who almost falls prey to the Don. She brought a lovely, melting tone to the two arias she sings to her fiance Masetto, well portrayed by bass Oren Gradus.
As Donna Anna, the noblewoman whose father the Don slays in a duel, soprano Barbara Frittoli commanded admiration. What her voice lacked in intrinsic beauty, she more than made up for with an honest musicianship that was always vocally and emotionally on target. The role of her patient lover, Don Ottavio, was sung by Michael Schade, whose refined, light tenor voice made his two arias, including the famous "Il mio tesoro" a treat for the ears.
Bass-baritone Richard Bernstein was a wonderfully toothy and vulgar Leporello, the Don's long-suffering manservant, and bass Eric Halfvarson intoned ominously as Donna Anna's father, who reappears as a statue to usher Don Giovanni into the underworld. Soprano Carol Vaness used her keen sense of Mozart style to compensate for a lack of security in her upper register and turned in a poignant portrayal of Donna Elvira, the seduced and abandoned victim who keeps coming back for more.
But what of the title character, who ideally must combine devastating charm with a dangerous cruelty and self-absorption? Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovksy has charm to burn -- his velvety tones in his Serenade or the duet "La ci darem la mano" with Zerlina made him seem a most plausible seducer. But the menace was lacking; when he wasn't flashing a flirtatious smile, he sometimes tended to fade into the background.
Some of the problem may be that the soft-grained texture of his voice is hard pressed to dominate the Met's vast stage. That's partly the fault of the production itself, which though ingenious in its use of sliding columns and descending backdrops, leaves the singers too much space to conquer.
Conductor Sylvain Cambreling didn't help matters by favoring slow tempos that rarely made the score crackle with energy and tension.
The current season apparently marks the last outing for the production. Tentative plans call for a new version, directed by Dieter Dorn, to premiere in spring of 2004.