The New York Theatre Wire
By Glenn Loney
Luca Ronconi's new Salzburg staging of Don Giovanni is a long way off from Seville. And even from Mozart and his librettist, Lorenzo Da Ponte.
Instead, it seems inspired by the trendy Futurist Twenties in Fascist Italy. Indeed, it is apparently set in a huge railroad station—with immense vertical apertures for doors and windows.
Even the program is illustrated with a series of long corridors, echoing the vacant vistas of the basic set. This is not an abandoned train-station, for Do?a Elvira [Barbara Frittoli]—handsomely garbed in the height of Art Deco fashion—is about to board a 1920s railway-coach.
This transportation-image suggests that the "train has already left the station" for the libidinous Don [Dmitri Hvorostovsky], trapped in his desperate cycle of laborious and joyless seductions.
Set-designer Margherita Palli also offers the suggestion that "Time is running out" for Giovanni. A pile of large dials is a recurrent image, as are great overhead clock-faces. At one point, the complex innards of an immense clockwork are revealed, also suggesting the inexorable grinding of the Mills of the Gods.
To astonish the impressionable Zerlina [Maria Bayo]—in Deco wedding-gown by designer Marianne Glittenberg—Don Giovanni comes for her in his sleek white convertible roadster.
Her groom Masetto [Detlef Roth] is discovered with rough buddies working on a 1920s auto. It could be stolen, and the venue a chop-shop.
When Leporello [Franz Hawlata] and the Don are in the cemetery, huge mounds of white skulls piled behind the empty doorways clue in spectators who may not have read the synopsis.
At stage-right, there is an immense globe, suggesting all kinds of things. Baroque star-charts are projected on it, among other images. It also opens to reveal the Statue of the Commendatore [Matti Salminen].
At the close, it revolves to disclose a glowing red Hell.
Although the predominate set-tones are grays, blacks, and browns—which may suit an atmosphere of gloom-and-doom—the score and the way the fable is unfolded, especially with the comic chorus coda, indicate a more colorful, sensuous, even sexy milieu. After all, the Don isn't the only one hungering for sex.
Some bold basic colors light the empty openings now and then, but they are also flat and joyless.
At the Don's dinner-party, he is scooting around in a motorized wheelchair. I heard no announcement that he'd hurt himself backstage, so I assumed he had contracted AIDS from his sexual adventures.
The props and serving of the dinner were rather tacky—which may also have been symbolic. But there were too many symbolic props and images, some of which did not clearly relate to the characters, plot, or score.
Hvorostovsky—especially as a dapper 1920s lady-killer Don—is the stuff of which matinee-idols are made. Karita Mattila, as Do?a Anna, was also an elegant Art Deco image. Indeed, most of the principals not only sang their roles with passion and intelligence, but they played them stylishly as well.
Only Masetto and Don Ottavio [Bruce Ford] sang earnestly, but with little sense of character or commitment to the plot-actions ordained for them.
Loren Maazel conducted the Vienna Philharmonic. In several newspaper reports, he was identified as "the American conductor," even though his work has long been very well known in Vienna. Seldom does one read of "the British conductor John Eliot Gardiner." Maybe Maazel doesn't have an EU passport?
Copyright © Glenn Loney 1999.