Now in its 56th season, West Bay Opera has earned its reputation as one of the Bay Area’s more enduring musical organizations. For evidence of the company’s continued vibrancy, though, you need look no further than its splendid new production of Don Giovanni.
Friday night at the Lucie Stern Theatre in Palo Alto, the company under General Director Jose Luis Moscovich revived Mozart’s opera with style and brio. The performance, which repeats through Feb. 26, had all the elements: cogent staging, an energetic cast, and excellent music direction by conductor Michel Singher.
Credit Singher — who enforced brisk tempos, drew dynamic playing from the orchestra, and supported his youthful singers at every turn — with the lion’s share of the evening’s success. Yet this was a performance in which everyone was well-rehearsed and ready to give their all to Mozart’s drama giocoso.
Director David W. Cox isn’t the first to place Don Giovanni in a contemporary setting, but his staging works well in the intimate confines of the 425-seat Lucie Stern. Jean-Francois Revon’s single unit set, atmospherically lit by Robert Ted Anderson and enlivened by Tod Nixon’s sound designs, suggests a street in a New York barrio, with brick facades and a corner bodega giving the scene a gritty look. When the men fight, it’s with baseball bats, boards, and beer bottles; the wedding party appeared to have just emerged from a nightclub. The Act 2 curtain rose on a small shrine of flowers, cards, and balloons under a black velvet portrait of the Commendatore; the Don’s banquet was an amusing assortment of fast food — Chinese takeout, a bucket of chicken, bottles of wine, and a box of doughnuts — served al fresco in front of the bodega. In Cox’s vision, Hell isn’t under the stage, but down a back alley.
The cast, costumed in Callie Floor’s contemporary rags, was easy to identify. Leporello made his first entrance in jeans, a leather jacket, and a baseball cap; holding an iPad in his “Catalog” aria, he snapped Elvira’s picture with his cell phone and instantly transferred it to the larger device. I might have wished for a more distinctive look for the title character (in his program notes, Cox alludes to the Occupy movement, suggesting that Don Giovanni is a prototypical One-Percenter). Yet this Don looked only slightly better off than the others — a middle-class slacker slumming for illicit pleasures on the poor side of town. The singers inhabited their roles with considerable dramatic verve and a focus on tonal beauty.
Still, it was hard to quibble with the performances. With all the action contained on the single set, the singers were free to focus on singing; if they didn’t always achieve the Mozartean ideal, they inhabited their roles with considerable dramatic verve and a focus on tonal beauty.
In the principal roles, Christina Major’s Donna Anna took top honors. The soprano commanded attention in Act 1’s vivid “Fuggi, crudele, fuggi,” and continued to sing with urgency, assurance, and bright, refulgent tone throughout the evening. In the title role, baritone Daniel Cilli missed a bit of the Don’s requisite swagger, but his singing was robust; alternately callous and gallant, he sounded especially suave in the ravishing “Serenade.”
As Leporello, bass Adam Paul Lau got off to an unsteady start, though he came into his own as the evening progressed, deploying muscular tone and displaying impressive breath control in the Act 2 sextet. Cilli and Lau managed some very funny moments of roughhousing in their duets.
Liisa Davila, playing a visibly pregnant Elvira, lent the character an aptly assertive edge. Kristen Choi was a sparkling, seductive Zerlina (no reticent rustic, she) and, although she sounded rather overmatched in “Batti, batti o bel Masetto,” sang with tenderness in “Vedrai carino.” Jonathan Smucker delivered Ottavio’s “O mio tesoro” with firm, elegant line. Carlos Aguilar’s big, bluff Masetto occasionally sounded undersized; John Bischoff supplied a measure of excitement as he stepped out of that velvet portrait, although he lacked the Commendatore’s requisite weighty timbre.
There was nothing lightweight about the orchestra under Singher. After a rather scrappy Overture, the conductor galvanized his forces, and the performance gathered in strength throughout the three-hour performance. Singher understands that Don Giovanni requires propulsive drive, firm tempos and keen dramatic tension, and he delivered on all counts. The results were buoyant and unflaggingly engaging