English Touring Opera at the Wolverhampton Grand Theatre
21st April 2008
There’s a lot you can do with Don Giovanni. You can cut the recitative and give everyone mobile phones – Garden Opera. You can have Don Giovanni waving a condom at a miniskirted and fully acquiescent Donna Anna, while Leporello has an onstage wee – ENO. You can have gravestones designed for the audience to sit on – Birmingham Opera Company. Or you can turn Don Giovanni into a Nazi and have the entire cast doing Nazi salutes, as in this production – English Touring Opera.
It would be wrong to say the production has no dramatic value. In this interpretation, it really is probably safer for Ilona Domnich’s lovely Zerlina to risk her marriage than to risk Don Giovanni’s wrath. Leporello (the charming Jonathan Gunthorpe) has even less of an option of leaving his master. But these aspects of the plot are not a serious problem in a more conventional production. And Also, as Donna Anna calls Don Giovanni a friend, this presumably means the Commendatore and Don Ottavio are Nazis as well. And probably Leporello. So killing Don Giovanni doesn’t really solve the problems. And having Nazis all over the place, reminding you of a time that was really pretty horrific, doesn’t exactly add to the comedy.
The role of the Don was taken by Roland Wood, last year’s Onegin. He is a very fine Mozartian, as he showed when he sang extracts from the roles of Papageno and Figaro in Classical Opera Company’s A-Z Mozart Opera. As Don Giovanni, he sang very well, but there was something very slimy about him. Of course, this is a perfectly legitimate interpretation considering Don Giovanni is a bit of a slime ball. And maybe his officer status alone is sufficient to guarantee his success with women. But this makes it very difficult to understand why at least two of the three very different women in the opera are so tempted by him.
As it was, I wondered why the women didn’t go for Leporello. Jonathan Gunthorpe was gorgeous – he has all the charm his master lacks. He was very funny, with lots of energy - he really commanded the stage, despite being far from a commanding character. He also has a really lovely voice, unusually light for a Leporello, but he sang with lots of warmth, character, and style.
One thing that did interest me about the production was possibly an accident. But it was intriguing that Don Giovanni had a heavier voice than Leporello. Usually, it’s clearly the other way round, and it’s the same arrangement in Le nozze di Figaro – Count Almaviva is usually lighter-voiced than Figaro. (Cosi fan tutte is more difficult to define – as usual. But, if Don Alfonso is not of the servant class himself – and his title does suggest he is not – he does seem to have slightly more affinity for Despina than for the four lovers.)
But, getting back to Don Giovanni, is it possible that Jonathan Mumby’s production is set in a world where Leporello is from a higher class than his master? Perhaps, in this Nazi interpretation, it is possible. I don’t know whether it would work in Nazism, but, theoretically, even if Don Giovanni had been born into the lower classes, he would, on becoming an officer, by default also become a gentleman. Leporello, on the other hand, could be a member of, say, the middle class, but because he shows no real leadership qualities, he wouldn’t rise in the ranks like Don Giovanni has. This could explain why Don Giovanni eats like an animal. I know Leporello eats off the floor, but he probably cleaned the floor himself - if he is as committed to cleaning as he is to cooking, the floor might not be in such a bad state. And anyway, I think I’d rather invite Leporello round and watch him eat off the floor than watch Don Giovanni eat from a plate. Disgusting.
A lot of the characters weren’t ideally suited to their roles, but ETO has found some good performers. Eyjolfur Eyjolfsson is undoubtedly a fine singer, and his Don Ottavio was, shockingly, quite a strong character to begin with. Rather than being a wet wimp, he seemed like a man of action who suddenly doesn’t know what to do. But (even though every other reviewer said the opposite) his voice did seem on the heavy side for Ottavio.
Similarly, Laura Parfitt sounded like she’d have been more at home in ETO’s Anna Bolena. The dramatic soprano, whose repertoire includes Abigaille, has a huge voice, and was very good at portraying Donna Elvira as hysterical and unstable. I doubt many Abigailles could have done better, but I can’t honestly say her arias sounded beautiful.
But Julia Sporsen sounded great as Donna Anna, displaying a lovely, warm soprano and impressive acting talents, her arias superbly sung and genuinely exciting. The Swedish soprano also the best English diction – maybe this wasn’t such an advantage on this occasion, but in most performances this quality is always welcome. Ilona Domnich was very endearing as a Zerlina who obviously has a huge flirting problem, but really didn’t seem able to help it. She has a very beautiful and very useful voice – it has a lightness that is ideal for soubrette roles, but it can be heard over the orchestra and during ensembles.
The two characters that matched Gunthorpe’s Leporello were probably the two you’d least expect to do so. Adrian Powter sang Masetto with an unusual sweetness in both his voice and personality. Zerlina was mad to risk letting this one get away! Andrew Slater was excellent as the Commendatore. Often, the singer is judged only on his appearance in the final scene, but Slater made a positive impression right from the start – his voice strong and firm, but attractive. It was a shame he didn’t win the fight, really. He was also one of the creepiest Commendatores ever, his voice menacing here, and much louder than I was expecting it to be. For once, he was actually a statue.
The orchestra were great – there were a few surprises from conductor Michael Rosewell regarding tempi and some very surprising cuts, but I might well have loved it if I’d kept my eyes shut. The translation, however, was very clumsy and unidiomatic. Some of it was far too literal – Zerlina’s ‘vorrei et non vorrei’ could be correctly translated as ‘I want and I don’t want’, but it doesn’t make a great deal of sense in English. It’s not an easy line to translate, but Amanda Holden managed to find a reasonable compromise in her excellent translation.
There were some very good things about some of the performers, and the production was interesting, I suppose. But I don’t think I’d like to see it again. Personally, I’d rather sit on a gravestone while Leporello does a wee against it as he speaks into his mobile phone.
Cunning Little Vixen
primi-divi at hotmail.co.uk