{"id":77062,"date":"2014-10-06T00:00:41","date_gmt":"2014-10-05T22:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gbopera.it\/?p=77062"},"modified":"2016-11-26T00:28:47","modified_gmt":"2016-11-25T23:28:47","slug":"lyric-opera-of-chicagodon-giovanni","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/lyric-opera-of-chicagodon-giovanni\/","title":{"rendered":"Lyric Opera of Chicago:”Don Giovanni”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chicago, Lyric Opera \u2013 2014\/2015 Season<\/em>
\n\u201cDON GIOVANNI\u201d<\/strong>
\nDramma Giocoso in two acts KV527. Libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte.
\nMusica di Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart<\/strong>
\nDon Giovanni<\/em> MARIUS KWIECIEN
\nDon Ottavio<\/em>\u00a0 ANTONIO POLI
\nIl Commendatore<\/em>\u00a0 ANDREA SILVESTRELLI
\nDonna Elvira<\/em>\u00a0 ANA MAR\u00cdA MART\u00cdNEZ
\nDonna Anna<\/em>\u00a0 MARINA REBEKA
\nLeporello<\/em>\u00a0 KYLE KETELSEN
\nMasetto<\/em> MICHAEL SUMUEL
\nZerlina<\/em> ANDRIANA CHUCHMAN
\nOrchestra & Chorus Lyric OperaConductor
\nConductor Sir Andrew Davis
\n<\/strong>Chorus Master Michael Black
\n<\/strong>Director Robert Falls
\n<\/strong>Set Designer Walt Spangler
\n<\/strong>Costume Designer Ana Kuzmanic
\n<\/strong>Lighting Designer Duane Schuler
\n<\/strong>Choreographer August Tye<\/strong>
\nNew Production
\nChicago, October 2, 2014 \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em>
\n
\nDon Giovanni<\/em>, Lyric Opera of Chicago\u2019s inaugural \u201ccalling card\u201d production back in 1954, has boasted outstanding artists throughout the company\u2019s 60-year history. In the title role alone, Lyric has presented Nicola Rossi-Lemeni, Eberhard Waechter, Nicolai Ghiaurov, Tito Gobbi, Richard Stilwell, Samuel Ramey, James Morris and Bryn Terfel. Mariusz Kwiecien<\/strong> is the company\u2019s latest choice and he offers up a tour-de-force performance worthy of his illustrious predecessors.
\nIn his program biography, Kwiecien contributed the following reflections on the character of Don Giovanni: \u201cWhen I was 29, I played him as 29, full of energy, hope and life. I didn\u2019t explore the darker side. Now I\u2019m 41, I can feel his melancholy. He has bad days, when he feels his age and he\u2019s asking himself where it\u2019s all going. His problem is that life and the world have become too small for him. He finds himself in a corner, where nothing inspires him. He\u2019s tried all sorts of women, maybe men too, travel, food and drink. But the only thing he hasn\u2019t experimented with is death, so the whole thing with the Commendatore is a big excitement for him: he wants to look into the abyss.\u201d This is a bold dramatic concept and Kwiecien mined its potential with shattering determination.
\nKwiecien\u2019s Don Giovanni views life as nothing more than Death\u2019s waiting room.<\/strong> As he waits for the inevitable, Kwiecien devours women, wine and food with staggering hedonism. This portrayal invites a question: as best we can determine, why has Don Giovanni never murdered before? What is it about his development as a character that made this the moment ripe for such exploration? When confronted by the Commendatore in the opening scene, Kwiecien\u2019s Don Giovanni at first walks away from his challenge but then turns and methodically decides he will take the step of killing another human being. Like Oscar Wilde\u2019s Dorian Gray, this libertine defies conventional mortality in his quest to break every human taboo. Kwiecien studies the Commendatore\u2019s final moments as if they were his own, a \u201clook into the abyss\u201d as Kwiecien puts it, fully aware that he has set into motion the damnation that awaits him. The opera, then, becomes a statement about the final day in the life of a Promethean character, a manic episode of frightening intensity. Kwiecien\u2019s interpretation surfaces something revelatory about Mozart\u2019s anti-hero and the human condition. Unfortunately, he is forced to compete with a kitchen-sink production that shoots itself in the foot by distracting attention from Kwiecien\u2019s thesis rather than providing the focus necessary to amplify its power.
\nRobert Falls<\/strong>, the celebrated artistic director of Chicago\u2019s Goodman Theatre, has updated the action of the opera to 1920s Spain, in the years following the Spanish Civil War. Don Giovanni is an evocation of various leading men of that era, including Rudolph Valentino and Douglas Fairbanks. Donna Elvira is an Amelia Earhart-style adventuress, making her first appearance in a flashy sidecar motorcycle. The peasant costumes of Masetto and Zerlina\u2019s wedding party mix with scanty flapper gowns for the women of easy virtue at Giovanni\u2019s party. It\u2019s a picturesque staging with many arresting visuals (including Don Giovanni\u2019s banquet table sinking into hell like the Titanic) but too clever for its own good and needing a stronger editorial hand.\u00a0 Excesses abound and sometimes lend the proceedings an unnecessarily cartoonish dimension. Coloratura passages are usually motivated by the caress of a breast or fondling of the genitals. Sexual acts of all kinds are enacted in a stilted, \u201coperatic\u201d way that seldom reads as anything but artificial. Donna Elvira becomes a tiresome Latina stereotype, an \u2018r\u2019 rolling, foot-stomping amalgam of Carmen Miranda, Charo and Gloria from MODERN FAMILY. Even worse, Elvira gratuitously inflicts a superficial wound on Don Giovanni by shooting him with a pistol during the penultimate banquet scene. But the most horrid directorial choice is replacing the onstage \u2018banda\u2019 during Don Giovanni\u2019s final supper with a period radio console, which \u201cchannels\u201d the offstage players via amplification of gruesome tininess. However, Walt Spangler\u2019s Escorial-inspired set design and Ana Kuzmanic\u2019s stylish costumes cannot be faulted for authenticity or flair. In addition to his superbly realized dramatic portrayal, Kwiecien sings with suave finish and notable refinement<\/strong>. There was none of the forcing and bluster that have sometimes marred his recent performances. The production capitalizes on his pleasing physical attributes, including an open kimono in the final scene, which allowed full display of his chiseled body. Beyond surface appearances, Kwiecien exudes a swaggering assurance that proves irresistible.Kwiecien is surrounded by an attractive, mostly engaging cast. As Donna Anna, Marina Rebeka<\/strong> achieves the kind of vocal excellence in this role one associates with the young Joan Sutherland. Her gleaming, tireless soprano is equal to every aspect of this fiendishly difficult part. Like Sutherland, her consonants are not distinctive and this robbed the crucial recitatives of textual bite and variety. But the arias themselves are rendered in singing of astonishing perfection. As Donna Elvira, Ana Mar\u00eda Mart\u00ednez s<\/strong>howed she is still capable of polished utterance in Mozart. The rigors of Butterfly and Rusalka have not robbed Mart\u00ednez, an enormously versatile artist, of any of her vocal creaminess and flexibility. The soprano is a local favorite and her vulnerable portrayal transcends the limitations of the characterization imposed upon her, communicating directly from the heart.\u00a0 As Zerlina, Andriana Chuchman<\/strong> sings sweetly but her characterization is curiously passive, closer to M\u00e9lisande than to Carmen. Kyle Ketelsen<\/strong> is a Leporello of enormous elegance, with his own magnetic presence; it was easy to imagine him impersonating his master at various points in the opera. Michael Sumuel<\/strong> is a more forceful Masetto than most, while Andrea Silvestrelli repeats his towering Commendatore, replete with spectral, bone-rattling voice. The weak link is Antonio Poli<\/strong> as Don Ottavio. He is a sympathetic performer with a sizable, appealing lyric instrument but he lacks the technical proficiency required to shine in this virtuoso role and sometimes ends up at sea in certain passages. Sir Andrew Davi<\/strong>s conducts with authority but there are occasional lapses in matters of balance and ensemble. Oddly, it appears that Davis has allowed his stage director to make some questionable choices about the excision or inclusion of certain \u2018secco\u2019 recitatives. In summary, this was a DON GIOVANNI notable for Kwiecien\u2019s fascinating protagonist and his thought provoking, deeply disturbing examination of Mozart\u2019s darkest opera.Photo Todd Rosenberg<\/span><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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