Saw "Don Giovanni" at the Met Opera last night.
The singing was wonderful. Matthew Polenzani was particularly lovely as Don Ottavio, and Alexandra Deshorties is quite a lovely singer. I single out these two particularly, but everyone in last night's performance did a lovely job. The orchestra was, as usual for the Met, wonderful, although the Overture felt a little sticky and muddy to me at times. Then again, I'm an unusally harsh critic! Especially when it's an opera I know.
Unfortunately, the music was pretty much the best part of the evening.
The production is a new one for this season, and it's horrible. First off, the lights just are not bright enough - except at the finale - you can almost never see anyone's faces. I guess they're thinking that since so much of the story takes place at night, and since a major plot element involves, during that night, two characters trading clothes and pretending to be one another, that it would be good to illuminate the stage "artistically." Hogwash.
The sets were stupid. Giant brick walls that move around to create space, but never provide a sense of place. There's nothing to differentiate the "outside" scenes from the "inside" scenes (although a couple scenes got some unfinished looking white backdrop).
The costumes made no sense. They were from that insipid school of costume design where "let's use lots of different things from different periods because it'll be fun." Which is, unless there's a concerted directorial approach where it really needs to have that. And that's not the approach you take with "Don Giovanni." My biggest gripe? Masetto was wearing brightly striped Converse high-tops.
The direction was lousy, too. The director added a lot of stage business that just had no place in the opera. The worst was an MTV style dance-off on the first duet between Zerlina and Masetto. And having Masetto behave the same way during "Bati Bati O bel Masetto" (mad and trying to stay on the other side of the stage, but surreptiously sliding closer to the person doing the singing) as Zerlina did during the scene where the Don is trying to seduce her... well, it was corny.
And the staging for Don Giovanni's entree into hell was pretty horrid, too. The ghost of the Commenadore is heard to knock on the door - but there is no door... so when he is "let in," he miraculously appears on the inside of a mirror. Stupid. Then during his confrontation with Giovanni, there comes a point when Giovanni touches the front of the mirror -- and it starts to snow. What the fuck? So it snows, they sing, and then the mirror turns out to be on a stage elevator which lowers down into hell -- taking Giovanni and the Commendatore down into hell... Only I didn't think that the Commendatore was supposed to be in hell. But what do I know? I never got hired to design or direct a production for the Metropolitan Opera House.
'Course, I think I'm better qualified than some of the dolts who have...
Posted by Jon at April 22, 2004 12:10 PM | TrackBack