DON GIOVANNI
DON GIOVANNI, Opera Australia at the Sydney Opera House, 24 September-5 November 2011. Photos: Teddy Tahu Rhodes and Taryn Fiebig; right: Teddy Tahu Rhodes; by Branco Gaica
Between bonking, bunga bunga and occasional moments of governing boring old Italy, it’s hard to imagine that Silvio Berlusconi has even a couple of hours left for anything as time-consuming as opera. If he did, surely his all-time favourite would have to be Don Giovanni. That’s assuming, of course, that he’d leave at the interval and not return for the second half when his alter ego’s world goes all to hell.
In other words, Giovanni is an extraordinarily contemporary character and worthy of a much more interesting interpretation than the increasingly weary “Enlightenment” version from 1991. Where once it was elegant, it’s now insipid, polite and unchallenging and apparently OA subscribers love it, which is depressing in the extreme because we’re stuck with it. (Elke Neidhardt’s thrilling production from 2008 appears to have been dumped in favour of the Järvefelt-Oberle confection and it didn’t even make the trip to Melbourne.)
This latest restaging of the old Giovanni is blessed with fine singers and that saves it from utter irrelevance, but the absence of subtext or inner life makes it hard work – particularly for this member of the audience. Teddy Tahu Rhodes is a famously beautiful human being as well as possessed of a glorious voice and ability to use it. He oozes charm and charisma and this makes him an obvious Giovanni. That is if – going back to where we began – the idea of an irresistible ladykiller is enough to explain rape, coercion and what would now be termed sex addiction.
Yet is it the performance or what we know of the man giving the performance that makes women go dotty and men turn into indulgently accepting wannabe’s of Giovanni’s dirty deeds? As it is, the sleek black wig instantly suggests an image of Berlusconi, while the black leather shorts, long bronzed legs in long black boots and lubriciously gleaming six pack strongly suggest the image Berlusconi conjures of himself when he looks in the mirror. It’s both hilarious and repulsive – and oddly appealing.
In addition, the first half of the opening night performance seemed oddly flat. The pace – under conductor Mark Wigglesworth – felt enervating and the singers were strained and straining under the constraint of his baton. So, for instance, the sparkling strength and true voice we’ve come to know of Taryn Fiebig (Zerlina) was noticeably absent; while the usually splendid Jacqueline Dark (Donna Elvira) and Rachelle Durkin (Donna Anna) were similarly subdued. The stage came to life in the closing ensemble, however, and something happened during the break (flea in ear of conductor perhaps?) and all three were able to shine in the second half as the musical reins were loosened.
As Giovanni’s manservant and enabler, Leporello, Conal Coad brings all his considerable experience and acting ability to the role; he is both funny and hapless by turns in what is the key role in this interpretation after the don. Here is the man who keeps a tally of his master’s conquests in a little brown book, all the while finding his antics exasperating as well as dangerous to his – Leporello’s – health. Nevertheless, it’s in this relationship – in which the lord and master has the literal power of life and death over his servant and is as casual about it as he is at leaping in and out of bed – that the charm of these particular characterizations falls down. Both should have the steel of reprehensibility beneath the superficial sugar of “love me, love me” and it’s not there.
Is this expecting too much of Mozart’s brilliant, brittle music and story of the rise and fall of the man who has too much? No, Mozart’s view of the society in which he moved and variously rose and fell was much more subtle than mere brilliance. His abiding fascination with and targeting of droit de seigneur surely tells us that. That’s whereNeidhardt’s rethinking of the opera was both truer to the original and truer to our times than this genteel and therefore pointless production.
In 2008 I wrote, inter alia, of the Neidhardt production, “Don Giovanni is Mozart at his most subversive and, dare it be said, modern. Giovanni is a love rat whose amorality would be familiar to anyone who studies the gossip mags or sports pages on even a casual basis. In Neidhardt’s reading of the character, he isn’t the grand if flawed alpha male whose natural appetites lead him to tragedy and damnation, but rather a man whose arrested emotional development condemns him to a world view of “who me?” and “it’s not my fault, I couldn’t help it.” It’s likely that lurking somewhere in his background is a doting mother on whom he - and society - blames everything … Giovanni is at once repellent and attractive, logical and appalling. Men like him prowl the smart bars and clubs of Sydney's CBD on Friday nights and women like Anna, Elvira and Zerlina fall for them despite their better judgment …” (see the archive for the rest.)
Of the same production Catriona Menzies-Pike wrote (on the media-culture website) “… Don Giovanni has become something of a timeless human figure, which seems all the more reason to rescue him from being a period piece. Swathes of Opera Australia’s usual audience will no doubt be horrified, but we urgently need more opera like this.” And Menzies-Pike should know: she’s probably three decades younger than that audience and she’s the future of opera in Australia – if it is to have one.
Even more depressing – and unforgivable – is that the culturally neo-colonial Järvefelt-Oberle production is soon to be immortalized in HD for cinema and DVD release. That means it may be seen all over the world: is this really how we want to be represented to audiences in Europe and America where such a rendering wouldn’t be tolerated from a provincial pro-am outfit? It’s an excruciating and embarrassing prospect – rather like Italy under Berlusconi – so hey, bring on the bunga bunga and let’s get blind.
