Mozart live from La Scala
For $25, low-heeled New Yorkers got to attend the opening night of La Scala’s 2011–12 season, with its new production of Don Giovanni (Anna Netrebko as Donna Anna, Peter Mattei as the Don, Bryn Terfel as Leporello, Daniel Barenboim conducting). Emerging Pictures, distributor of “alternative” (read “non-Hollywood”) content like opera, classic films and indie premiers, broadcast Don Giovanni live via satellite to Big Apple theaters, including Symphony Space and BAM.
The satellite transmission was not without its glitches, mostly minor interruptions at the beginning, with a major breakdown only minutes before the end. The sound was much smaller than the production deserved, and viewers familiar with the Metropolitan Opera’s HD broadcasts were disappointed with the camerawork coming out of La Scala.
Still, it was a fabulous night at the opera. Aside from a rich, naturally beautiful voice, Mattei was able to convey the same innate sweetness that made him a brilliant Papageno at the Met, a quality that softened the repulsive side of Don Giovanni’s manic need to conquer. Terfel, the Met’s Wotan this season, limned Leporello’s buffo nature with a wry and comic intelligence that played beautifully off Mattei’s multifaceted characterization. And Netrebko, who opened the Met as Anna Bolena, plainly deserves her reputation as the season’s hottest soprano. Her “Or sai chi l’onore” brought tears to the eyes.
Robert Carsen’s highly controversial contributions as director should not be overlooked. Of the three operas that Mozart and Lorenzo da Ponte wrote together—The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Cosi Fan Tutte—the last two are ambiguous enough to have been staged with alternative endings. Carsen goes one step further: He’s staged an alternate ending and a different beginning. This Don Giovanni commences with Donna Anna and an unmasked Don Giovanni rolling around a big bed, making it clear that Donna Anna consents to the Don’s advances while knowing exactly whom she’s consenting to (both ambiguous in da Ponte’s libretto). This lays the ground for Carsen’s ultimate deviation from the original: While everyone else is moralizing about Giovanni’s bad behavior, the Don returns from hell to drag them down after him, as if saying that while he might have been a libertine, they’re just plain hypocrites, equally damned.
(Many thanks to Dr. Lloyd Gelman for his insightful observations.)
