in the title role
Brancoveanu owned the stage whenever he was on it, being both vocally and physically commanding, aristocratic and agile. His warm, intimate singing of the serenade, "Deh vieni alla finestra," was captivating enough to seduce every woman in the house. And his relish in conniving and heartless behavior made his fate inevitable.
Georgescu dispatched his patter songs with wit and precision, and it was a treat to hear the mastery with which the two engaged in conversation via recitative. Ashley Faatoalia's tenor voice is right for the difficult part of Don Ottavio — high, clear, and warm. He does not always succeed in feeling where the light is, and he needs to stop wandering about as he sings. But vocally he is secure and expressive, especially in his singing of "Il mio tesoro." In fact, all the men in the cast were exceptionally gifted singers. Igor Vieira's Massetto was strong and assertive, and Sergey Zadvorny was an imposing Commendatore.
The women in this opera are upset most of the time, and all three in this cast sang with dramatic fervor. Duana Demus Leslie sang Donna Anna, the victim of attempted rape and the loss of her father to Don Giovanni's sword. At times her emotion seems to swamp her coloratura; fast passagework has an emotion of its own, and needs to be precise. Her best performance was the singing of the great aria "Non mi dir," in which she asks Don Ottavio to bear with her while she mourns the death of her father.
Kali Wilson sang Donna Elvira, her voice beautifully conveying Elvira's conflicting emotions. Her singing of "Mi tradi quell' alma" and the preceding recitative, in which Elvira acknowledges that Don Giovanni is a dirty rat but she can't help loving him, was a vocal triumph. Krista Wigle, an accomplished actress, was well-cast as Zerlina. She sang "Vedrai carino" with a vibrato that created only an approximation of pitch; it didn't seem to matter much.
Move Into the Light
The stage setting was simple and serviceable, and Don Giovanni was dragged down to hell ingeniously and effectively. The lighting was dark too much of the
time. Even when the action takes place at night, singers need to be lit, either by being followed with spotlights or by being trained to find the light wherever it is. Conductor Barnaby Palmer held the opera together, and the staging was well-suited to Mozart's music. It's good to encounter in David Cox a director who trusts the music to make its own dramatic point. When the audience enjoys sight lines that include characters' feet, it would be nice to see people actually dancing in the party scene, to a menuet brisker than Palmer's, rather than just waving their feet around. But that's a quibble. San Francisco Lyric Opera deserves praise for bringing Mozart's magnificent music movingly alive.