Mozart – Don Giovanni

Don Giovanni – Nahuel Di Pierro
Donna Anna – Ruth Iniesta
Donna Elvira – Karen Gardeazabal
Don Ottavio – René Barbera
Leporello – Davide Giangregorio
Masetto – Nicolò Donini
Zerlina – Eleonora Bellocci
Commendatore – Abramo Rosalen

Coro del Teatro Comunale di Bologna, Orchestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna / Martijn Dendievel.
Stage director – Alessandro Talevi.

Teatro Comunale di Bologna – Comunale Nouveau, Bologna, Italy.  Tuesday, May 28th, 2024.

This new production of Don Giovanni is the latest collaboration between conductor Martijn Dendievel and stage director Alessandro Talevi at the Teatro Comunale di Bologna, following their successful Nozze di Figaro last year.  That Figaro was notable for stylish singing, graceful conducting, and a thoughtful staging.  I was curious, then, to see what they would do with another Mozart/Da Ponte collaboration.  The originally-cast Donna Anna, Olga Peretyatko, was unfortunately unwell, and was replaced at the very last moment by Ruth Iniesta, who hotfooted it down from Brussels, where she’s currently rehearsing Liù at De Munt.

Talevi sets the action either in front of a curtain with a small window surrounded by lights, or in a larger set enclosed by walls, with doors that change formation as the evening evolves.  Indeed, our first sight of the set as a cube of doors in the centre of the stage, was redolent of Kasper Holten’s much travelled staging of the work.  The costumes for the cast, by Stefania Scaraggi, varied also in terms of epoch, with Anna, Ottavio, and Elvira dressed in rococo outfits, while Masetto and Zerlina were dressed as 1960s youths, together with synchronized dancing – choreography by Danilo Rubeca.  It isn’t immediately obvious why Talevi chose to set the action as a time-travelling exercise.  Was it because the story of Don Giovanni is universal, crossing eras?  I did find the fact that Zerlina and Masetto were sexually liberated to be an interesting take.  Though here, I found the class relationships to be barely explored.  They did contrast with the more uptight incarnations of Anna and Ottavio, a couple who barely looked at each other, however.  Talevi also staged the opening scene as a very clear sexual assault, rather than Anna as a willing victim, the latter approach one that seems more common these days.

Another aspect I found also to be missing from Talevi’s staging was the giocoso from this dramma giocoso.  Despite the cast being made up of Italian and Hispanophone singers, I did find this reading to be rather straight-faced, missing the dark humour inherent to the libretto and score.  I’m also still wondering why Act 2 saw some of the noble characters then become puppets, acting through the window in the curtain, which is where Anna was also parked to sing her ‘non mi dir’.  That said, the final scene was striking in approach, with a hand emerging from a table for Giovanni to shake, and him later being pursued by a group of women in wedding dresses.  It felt that here, Talevi was making something of a feminist point to his descent into hell, though this wasn’t an aspect that had been explored during the remainder of the evening.

The performance also felt rather earthbound in Dendievel’s conducting.  In the Figaro, the tempi were on the slow side, but here they really dragged, making the evening feel much longer than it actually was.  The stone guest scene was extremely flaccid – the last quality one hopes for in a Don Giovanni – the tempo saggy and lacking in momentum.  His approach to the work was stately and graceful, yet I felt pacing was problematic.  For instance, in the Ottavio and Anna scene, when she realizes that it was Giovanni who had assaulted her, the transition into ‘or sai chi l’onore’ was bumpy, while ‘dalla sua pace’ seemed to come to a halt.  Ornamentation, essential in this repertoire and a pleasurable feature of the Figaro, was more or less missing here.  Other than Iniesta, it was barely used by the remainder of the cast.  The Comunale orchestra is an excellent band, but there were a few moments where stage/pit coordination went awry, and the on-stage band in the Act 1 finale was operating in a different time zone, which gave that scene an anarchic edge.  I also wished Dendievel had asked the strings to play senza vibrato throughout and used a sharper attack.  The tenors and basses of the chorus were placed a little too far off stage in the finale to have the maximum impact.

Don Giovanni is a difficult role to sing in that so much of the character is developed in the recitatives and ensembles.  Nahuel Di Pierro is very much a bass and it did sound to my ears that it took him a little while to find his best form.  The voice, at first, was rather grainy in tone and the break in the upper passaggio was rather prominent.  He definitely got through the champagne aria with his dignity intact, refraining from the temptation to bark it out.  When he got to the serenade, he found his best form, singing it with a milky smooth legato, focused, honeyed tone, and caressed the text most seductively.  I’ll admit it, I was definitely seduced by his serenade.  Davide Giangregorio gave us a lively Leporello, his catalogue aria engagingly sung off the text.  The voice with a nice resonant bottom and an active stage presence.  René Barbera coped most admirably with the stasis that was ‘dalla sua pace’, phrasing it with love and attention, though had he embellished the line it would have given his singing more individuality.  His tenor is bright and focused in tone, with an agreeable Latin sunniness.  He also got his ‘il mio tesoro’ in which he turned the corners with ease, although here the phrasing was slightly short.  As Masetto, Nicolò Donini, was an appropriately gruff vocal presence and the warmth of his bass made me eager to hear his Leporello.  Abramo Rosalen boomed imposingly as the Commendatore, although the voice does lose a little amplitude higher up.

Iniesta gave us a terrific Anna.  I don’t know how much rehearsal she had in Talevi’s staging, but her presence was so confident that it looked like she had been rehearsing it for weeks.  She really understands the need for ornamentation in this music, and embellished the line spectacularly in her ‘or sai che l’onore’, and also used the power of appoggiature to make her recitatives even more compelling.  She sang her ‘non mi dir’ on a pearly line, the corners turned with impeccable neatness, the text filled with meaning.  Karen Gardeazabal sang Elvira in a bright, focused soprano with easy reach.  She also turned the corners in her ‘mi tradì’, phrasing seemingly endless lines with ease.  I did, however, find that the voice, though pulchritudinous, lacked a wide variety of tone colours, and I wish she had made a bit more of the text.  Eleonora Bellocci gave us a vivacious Zerlina, sung in an equally bright soprano, with the beguiling fizz of a fast vibrato.

My overriding impression of tonight’s Don Giovanni is that it was a rather mixed evening.  The staging gave us an intriguing premise, though I’m not quite certain of the why in terms of the time-travelling identities of the cast.  The final scene was definitely visually exciting, though.  The conducting, I regret to say, was disappointing, lacking in a sense of forward momentum and often far too flaccid in approach.  There was, however, much to enjoy in the singing, from the female characters in particular, while Di Pierro sang an extremely seductive serenade.  The audience responded at the close with polite applause and generous cheers for Iniesta and Gardeazabal.