Opera Reviews
29 March 2024
Untitled Document

Simon Keenlyside returns



by Arlene Judith Klotzko
Mozart: Don Giovanni
Metropolitan Opera
October 2016

On the twentieth anniversary of his Met Opera debut, Simon Keenlyside made his house debut as Don Giovanni in a five year old listlessly traditional production by British theater director, Michael Grandage. Unlike many opera singers who view singing Mozart as a transitional stage in their careers, Keenlyside has continued to sing three major roles – Papageno, the Comte and, with the most frequency and geographic reach, Don Giovanni.

He was a marvelous Don – fully realized as an agitated burnt out husk of a seducer (no pun intended).  Despite all those catalogue entries, Giovanni failed miserably in his pursuit of women during the time we get to know him. Keenlyside captured the compulsive thrill seeking, particularly in the champagne aria, but there seemed to be no pleasure in any of it.

With his lieder singer’s sense of text and nuance – a gift for coloring words and establishing mood – Keenlyside combined sensitivity to the small and subtle with extraordinary theatricality. Although relatively short in stature compared with his Leporello (the charming and disarming Adam Plachetka), and Masetto (the rich dark voiced Matthew Rose), Keenlyside dominated throughout. His Don seduced Zerlina with his rank, his manner and his gestures but also with purely musical means -- the coloring of his voice and his phrasing. He strutted about the stage, conveying abject disdain for the mores of society, symbolized by the Commendatore, the excellent Kwangchul Youn  After beating Masetto, Keenlyside, ever the master of the telling gesture, turned and spat on him.

Unfortunately, Keenlyside’s richly characterized Giovanni was let down by a poorly conceived and minimally directed production. Its ponderous, drab set by Christopher Oram managed to be both too big – mostly confining the singers to the apron of the stage -- and do too little. There were two very large movable curved walls studded with three levels of shuttered windows featuring Juliet balconies. The effect was compared to an advent calendar when the production debuted five years ago and that analogy seems quite apt. The balconies were put to use in various ways. As the action began, the ever athletic Keenlyside made his escape by sliding down from Donna Anna’s balcony.  During Leporello’s catalogue aria, the Don’s varied tastes were evoked not by a visual image of the enormous number of conquests but by a few women of various ages shapes and sizes deployed on the balconies. Thus the broad comedy of that marvelous aria and the consequent humiliation of Elvira were lost. Finally, when the Commendatore reappeared as Don’s dinner guest, the balconies filled up with Commendatore clones.

Hibla Gerzmava was a splendid Donna Anna, her dark rich voice matched, at least in her scenes with Keenlyside, but dramatic conviction. Paul Appleby, has a lovely tenor voice but, particularly in “Dalla sua pace,” he had some difficulty sustaining his high notes in the face of the orchestra’s very slow tempo. Malin Byström, as Elvira, singing with agility and lovely vocal color, was convincing as a besotted woman who wanted to save Don Giovanni from himself, if not for herself. Zerlina was sung with warm, velvety tone by mezzo soprano Serena Malfi, who debuted at the Met two years ago as Cherubino. All of the singers, save Keenlyside, would have benefited greatly from more and better direction.

The Met Orchestra under Fabio Luisi was superb, although Luisi’s tempos were somewhat erratic. Periodically, when he speeded up, he left the singers hard pressed to keep pace. The overture sounded particularly fine, drawing the audience into the existential drama behind the opera with poisonous chromatic scales and then sprightly energy and ebullience confronted by a wall of chordal resistance and lurking menace.

In 1787, revolution was definitely in the air. Mozart was certainly no political firebrand, but he had chafed under the yoke of the tyrannical Archbishop of Salzburg. After Don Giovanni is dragged down to hell, the epilogue is sung by the conventional and rather pedestrian characters who remain. But the last word belongs to Don Giovanni. The final measures of the score unmistakably echo his celebratory toast at the end of act one: “Viva la liberta” Indeed.

Text © Arlene Judith Klotzko
Photo © Marty Sohl / Metropolitan Opera
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