Supporting Cast Weakens ‘Don Giovanni’

After putting on the best performance of “The Marriage of Figaro” in a generation, Bryn Terfel and Renee Fleming returned to the Metropolitan Opera for “Don Giovanni,” which airs on PBS tonight.

But although they had been surrounded with an all-star ensemble for the “Figaro” telecast, televised just after Christmas last year, the casting was not as deep for “Don Giovanni.”

The performance was taped in October, just after the Mozart masterpiece made its first opening-night appearance in the 117-year history of America’s premier opera company.

Terfel is exquisite as the Don, raping and pillaging his way through Europe: His voice, diction and acting are perhaps the best in the role since Cesare Siepi.

The chance to videotape Terfel in his prime helped convince the Met to go ahead with this second telecast of a dreary Franco Zeffirelli production, which was also broadcast on PBS shortly after its premiere in 1990, with Samuel Ramey as the Don, Carol Vaness as Donna Anna, Karita Mattila as Donna Elvira, Dawn Upshaw as Zerlina and Ferruccio Furlanetto as Leporello.

The production might not be around much longer. There is talk that Dieter Dorn will direct a new Met “Don Giovanni” with Thomas Hampson and Jane Eaglen for the 2003-04 season.

No matter. Terfel shines in any production, as does Fleming, who just keeps getting better. Singing her first Met Donna Anna, she shows both vulnerability and backbone after the Don tries to seduce her and kills her father, the Commendatore.

The telecast’s main problem is that Terfel can’t sing both the Don and his servant, Leporello, and Fleming can’t be both Donna Anna and Donna Elvira, a former lover of Don Giovanni who now denounces him.

Furlanetto, again appearing as Leporello, and Solveig Kringelborn, making her Met debut as Donna Elvira, are good but not great, no match for the memories of previous appearances in those roles by Terfel and Fleming.

Leporello’s great catalog aria, listing the totals of the Don’s conquests (640 in Italy, 231 in Germany, 100 in France, 91 in Turkey and 1,001 in Spain), is a specialty of Terfel’s. With Furlanetto, the sparkle is missing.

Kringelborn sings well but lacks characterization and nuance.

Gary Halvorson, who also directed the “Figaro” broadcast last year, uses quick camera switches to speed the pace. At times it works, at times it’s disconcerting.

Hei Kyung Hong is engaging as Zerlina, the peasant girl the Don tries to seduce, and Paul Groves is a winning Don Ottavio, Donna Anna’s fiance.

Sergei Koptchak’s Commendatore is outstanding, much more gripping in the close-ups that television provides than at the Met. In the final act, when he appears as a statue come to life, his demand that Giovanni repent or face death is spine-tingling.

The new principal costumes, by Sylvia Nolan, are better and brighter than their predecessors, by Anna Anni. Stephen Lawless, in his Met debut, markedly improves the stage direction.

James Levine, as usual, leads the Met orchestra in a light and lively performance, perfectly balanced between the comedy and tragedy created by Mozart and his librettist, Lorenzo da Ponte.

The next Met telecast, Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde,” was taped in December 1999 and is to be broadcast March 21. Levine conducts Ben Heppner and Jane Eaglen.

On Monday, PBS’ “Great Performances” broadcasts the annual New Year’s concert of the Vienna Philharmonic, taped earlier in the day at the Musikverein in Vienna. Nikolaus Harnoncourt is this year’s guest conductor for the program, which focuses on waltzes of the Strauss family.

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* “Don Giovanni” can be seen locally at 8 tonight on KCET-TV and KVCR-TV.