Don Giovanni is a tough opera to stage. With seven principal characters, four major plot strands, and a dizzying procession of scenes, it’s easy to get Mozart’s masterpiece wrong.
But director Robert Herriot has gotten everything right in Livermore Valley Opera’s current production, seen at its opening performance on Saturday, March 1. With a uniformly good cast and crisp conducting from Music Director Alexander Katsman, the opera moved swiftly and coherently from the dark opening of the overture to the brief wrap-up following the title character’s demise.
Herriot’s is a straightforward traditional production, set somewhere in the Spanish past and sporting period-appropriate costumes and props. Jean-François Revon’s tilted sets create a slightly claustrophobic effect, while his handsome projections define each scene and, via different giant red roses in each projection, provide visual continuity.
Don Giovanni needs a leading man who has swagger and sex appeal; after all, the title character’s conquests across Europe allegedly number more than 2,000. Baritone Titus Muzi III has a handsome voice and swaggered gracefully despite having suffered a leg injury during the dress rehearsal, neatly incorporating a cane into the staging. In the 500-seat Bankhead Theater, he was occasionally too loud. The first verse of the serenade “Deh, vieni alla finestra” (Come to the window) could have been more seductive.
As Leporello, bass-baritone Samuel Weiser was a terrific comedic foil, funny without any exaggerations and doing a fine job of imitating Muzi in the scene where Leporello fools Donna Elvira into thinking he’s Giovanni.
Cara Gabrielson’s vehement and conflicted Elvira — who wants both vengeance on Giovanni and his love — was inconsistently sung. Gabrielson handled florid singing well, but her powerful soprano could sometimes have been better modulated, and there were occasional coordination problems between her and the orchestra. She and Weiser collaborated amusingly on “Madamina, il catalogo è questo” (Young lady, this is a list), in which Leporello describes Giovanni’s methods of seduction.
That the opera moved so well was partially owing to the good decision to give Don Ottavio only the aria “Il mio tesoro” (My treasure) while cutting “Dalla sua pace” (Upon her peace of mind). Mozart composed the latter because the tenor at the Vienna premiere of Don Giovanni didn’t have the technical facility for “Il mio tesoro.” But the aria presented no challenges for David Walton, whose sweet tenor also had the sturdiness needed for Ottavio’s more forthright moments.
Soprano Meryl Dominguez made a dark-toned, somber Donna Anna, Ottavio’s fiancée, whose attempted seduction — or rape — by Giovanni sets the plot in motion. Bass Kirk Eichelberger was a stentorian Commendatore, Anna’s father. The pert soprano Phoebe Chee and bass-baritone Joseph Calzada could not have been more adorable as Zerlina and Masetto, the commoner couple whose relationship comes under stress once Giovanni starts eyeing Zerlina.
Owing to Herriot’s close adherence to the libretto, the opera’s closing scenes included details that some updated productions blur. There was the Commendatore’s statue, coming to dinner and demanding Giovanni’s repentance; there were the demons, dragging the unrepentant sinner off to the flames of hell. Herriot might have taken one tiny liberty at the very end. Giovanni’s catalog of conquests ends up in Ottavio’s hands. As he leafs through it, he seems to become distressed. Did he find a familiar name in its pages?
Livermore Valley Opera’s production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni plays two more performances, March 8 and 9.
