OPERA REVIEW : ‘Don Giovanni’ Goes for Baroque

The curtain rose at the premiere of the lavish new “Don Giovanni” Wednesday night at the Metropolitan Opera to reveal a stage within the stage. Centered atop the false proscenium, an ornate plaque proclaimed the time and place.

The year, Franco Zeffirelli informed us in all-too certain terms, was 1787. The locale: Prague.

Just in case anyone missed the point, the generous director-designer elaborated the data on a second plaque. This one was displayed at floor level, upon a phony prompter’s-box.

As usual, Zeffirelli had a gimmick. Although he allowed himself the liberty of a few stylistic anachronisms, he resolutely pretended that he was invoking the world premiere of Mozart’s tragicomic masterpiece.

His priorities were clear. He wasn’t going to bother much about the complex characters, and he obviously didn’t care to probe their passions, their contradictions or their destinies. With his million-dollar budget, he wanted to concentrate on creating pretty stage pictures, and on recreating the antique attitudes of Baroque theater.

By definition, the concept had to place a certain distance between the observer and the vehicle. Zeffirelli reduced Mozart and Da Ponte’s vital dramma giocoso to a series of artifices involving some self-absorbed opera stars who are encouraged to strike conventional poses while modeling Anna Anni’s gorgeous costumes. In this milieu, even the lowly peasants looked elegant.

One could--and probably should--disagree with the basic idea. Still, one must say this for Zeffirelli: He appropriated the opera with flair.

His stage pictures turned out to be very pretty indeed. He utilized the elaborate devices of 18th-Century stagecraft--painted scrims, moving portals, sliding columns, illustrative backcloths--with fluidity and imagination.

Undeniably, he turned the opera into a museum piece, and he sometimes teetered on the brink of kitsch. At least he made it a compelling museum piece. And when he teetered, he teetered with conviction.

Musically, the performance under James Levine adhered to the best standards currently practiced in big international houses. This was Mozart projected on a heroic scale, Mozart illuminated with proud bravura.

Levine did not choose to reinforce the Baroque implications of Zeffirelli’s staging. Appoggiaturas remained sparse and inconsistent. Da-capo embellishments and cadenzas turned out to be non-existent. The conductor’s essentially Romantic perspective precluded neither poise nor grace, however, and in this context his expressive urgency proved especially welcome.

The cast should have been dominated by Samuel Ramey in the title role. On a superficial level, it was. The American basso cut a dashing figure, flashed a rakish smile, exposed his trademark hairy chest as much as possible, and sang with constant, mellifluous heft.

Unfortunately, Zeffirelli let him settle for cliches. One searched in vain for telling aristocratic touches, for psychological conflicts, for sinister undertones and flashes of irresistible charm that might explain the protagonist’s monumental magnetism.

As in Karajan’s Salzburg production, Ferruccio Furlanetto complemented Ramey as a hearty, youthful, amusing but never clownish Leporello. It will be interesting to see what happens later in the season when the two exchange roles.

Although the three women were deftly cast, each semed to encounter some problem with opening-night nerves. As Donna Anna, Carol Vaness sounded a bit shrill under pressure, but she revealed just the right combination of poise, power and agility. Karita Mattila, remembered for her exquisite Ilia in the San Francisco “Idomeneo,” made her Met debut as a fluent and limpid if slightly edgy Donna Elvira. Dawn Upshaw, already a lovely Zerlina, suggested that she will be captivating in the role as soon as she stops forcing for impact.

Jerry Hadley, the Don Ottavio, managed both his arias with lyrical dignity and reasonable suavity, hints of indisposition notwithstanding. Julien Robbins introduced a solid, boyish Masetto.

Kurt Moll’s basso profondo was expended luxuriously on the utterances of Donna Anna’s father. It wasn’t his fault, of course, that Zeffirelli miscalculated the ghostly appearance of the stone guest in the denouement.

A huge statue of the Commendatore was relegated to canvas. Moll, a life-size Doppelganger clad in ill-matching armor, emerged timidly amid clouds of dry ice from the base. Under the circumstances, he looked like a puny emissary from a painted deity.

One felt no cause for panic here. Luckily, Mozart--and Levine--provided compensatory terrors.