Hither or Thither, ‘Giovanni’ Hits a Resounding Low Note

On a recent trip to Austria, I lucked my way, or so I thought, into a performance of Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” during a weeklong Mozart festival in his hometown of Salzburg.

When the curtain came down, I sat there flabbergasted to realize that just 100 yards or so from the house where Mozart lived, it was possible for a company to stage such a mediocre version of this endlessly rich work.

Most of the lead voices were no more than adequate, the acting was spotty and the staging was as shaky and under-rehearsed as the orchestra sounded.

Then, after seeing Opera Pacific’s staging of the same work a couple of weeks later at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, it struck me: I didn’t have to spend hundreds of dollars and fly thousands of miles just to be disappointed.

I could have been disappointed right here.

Together, the two experiences did give me a little more understanding of how hard it is to put together a worthy production of the work that some aficionados consider the pinnacle of operatic achievement. Problems in both productions surfaced immediately.

In Opera Pacific’s, it was director John Pascoe’s bizarrely concocted scene during the overture in which half-naked men engaged in self-flagellation as they circled the statue of a Madonna. What?--It’s too much to ask an audience to sit through six whole minutes of Mozart without giving them something to relieve the boredom?

In Salzburg, the overture was relatively straightforward, but as soon as Leporello, Don Giovanni’s reluctant servant, opened his mouth in the first scene, another questionable decision came glaringly to the fore: The opera that this Austrian wrote in Italian had been conveniently translated into German for the home audience.

Oh, I see--if Mozart had had any brains, he’d have written in the right language in the first place, ja wohl? Maybe the only thing more abhorrent than a translation was the thought of supertitles in German (Ubertitles?)

Neither company had a convincing Don Giovanni. Even to a relatively casual opera-goer such as myself, it seems obvious from the libretto that a man of staggering romantic reputation, whose “little” black book contains the names of more than 2,000 conquests, should project some hint of why women of all ages, sizes and cultures swoon for him.

Incidentally, a telling difference between the audiences in the two cities cropped up during the scene in which Leporello recounts his master’s litany of seductions. A key part of one of the world’s most performed and best-known operas, the familiar punch line about Don Giovanni having 1,003 women in Spain alone drew smiles of recognition from the Austrian crowd. But in Costa Mesa, we got a taste of how that line must have gone over on that opening night in Prague in 1787, as most of those at the Center convulsed with the freshness of first-timers.

In any case, both in Salzburg and Costa Mesa (did you ever imagine we’d hear those two cities mentioned in the same breath?), Don Giovanni was played as the ultimate lout. That might be sufficient in an Andrew Lloyd Webber vehicle, but Mozart should convey a whole universe of more depth. Giovanni could be played as a perfectionist of the heart, who genuinely loves each woman he romances, only to reject her when he inevitably discovers some flaw of humanity in her.

Mozart makes the case musically in the aria that Giovanni sings to the betrothed Zerlina, as he brazenly tries to woo her away from her fiance Masetto on their wedding day. At this point, through the vocal beauty of the baritone, even if the singer isn’t drop-dead gorgeous, we should feel exactly why women melt for this guy.

But we didn’t, in either town.

As to the rest of the casts, each was unable to give the audiences fully realized characterizations of the nearly seduced Donna Anna, the recently seduced Donna Elvira and Anna’s would-be knight in shining armor, Don Ottavio.

Elvira, especially, should break hearts everywhere when she sings near the end that despite all the ways Giovanni has wronged her, she would still love him if only he would repent his womanizing. In Costa Mesa, curiously, Elvira capped what should have been a poignant plea with a perky smile before she strolled off stage. In Salzburg, the recitation was competent, but hardly a soul-touching experience. But then, everybody can’t be Elizabeth Schwarzkopf.

On the other hand(s), because of sprightly performances of the Zerlinas and Leporellos in both productions, these two ancillary characters came close to stealing the show.

The conclusions of both productions had scenes of eye-rolling incredulity. In Costa Mesa, Pascoe again trotted out the Beat Boys and their whips, fog machines and strobe lights to mete out “justice” to Don Giovanni as he is pulled unrepentant into the underworld.

In Salzburg, it became Mozart-meets-”Hair” as Giovanni’s descent to Hell became a blur of flickering strobe lights (a trend?) and naked, arm-waving women (I guess even an artificial cloud can have an artificial silver lining, eh?). Chalk up points to Salzburg for retaining Mozart’s epilogue in which the surviving characters wrap up loose ends and reiterate the moral of the story--a scene deleted here on debatable grounds of historical precedent.

Walking away from the Costa Mesa production, I thought that as drastically far apart as they were geographically, historically and culturally, it was a tossup as to which had more redeeming qualities. I had to resort to extra-musical factors to decide.

Opera Pacific’s production certainly won hands down for the quicker ride home.

On the other hand, at least when I walked out of the Salzburg production, I was in Salzburg.