[Met Performance] CID:302040



Don Giovanni
Metropolitan Opera House, Thu, September 27, 1990

Debut : Hans Peter Blochwitz, Patricia Schuman




Don Giovanni (397)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart | Lorenzo Da Ponte
Don Giovanni
Thomas Hampson

Donna Anna
Cheryl Studer

Don Ottavio
Hans Peter Blochwitz [Debut]

Donna Elvira
Patricia Schuman [Debut]

Leporello
Paul Plishka

Zerlina
Marie McLaughlin

Masetto
Julien Robbins

Commendatore
Sergei Koptchak


Conductor
James Levine


Production
Franco Zeffirelli

Costume Designer
Anna Anni

Lighting Designer
Gil Wechsler

Choreographer
Norbert Vesak

Stage Director
Lesley Koenig





Don Giovanni received seventeen performances this season.
The revival of Mozart's opera this season was dedicated to the memory of Eleanor Steber, who died October 3, 1990. The notice of dedication first appeared in the program at the performance of October 11.

FUNDING:
The Metropolitan Opera's Mozart Bicentennial Celebration a special gift of the Lila Acheson and DeWitt Wallace Fund for Lincoln Center

Review 1:

Peter G. Davis in New York Magazine
Franco Zeffirelli’s “Don Giovanni” can be scarcely be said to exist at all

New this past season, Franco Zeffirelli’s production of “Don Giovanni” at the Metropolitan Opera can scarcely be said to exist at all, except as an odd assortment of picture-postcard sets and fancy costumes. Since Zeffirelli has paid so little attention to the opera's characters and to the dramatic action, the singers of this year's revival, rehearsed by Lesley Koenig, must more or less make it up as they go along. Some will obviously be more adept at this sort of thing than others, and so it's no surprise that the first-night performance looked so scattered and full of inexplicable happenings.


Why, to pick at random, does Don Ottavio mysteriously leave the stage in the middle of Donna Anna's last aria? Has he finally lost all patience with her? Is he dashing off to wreak vengeance on Don Giovanni? Does he need to be excused? We never know. In the banquet scene, the libretto instructs Donna Elvira and Leporello to rush into the wings, encounter the Commendatore's living marble statue, and scream in horror. At the Met, for no apparent reason, both remain onstage and ludicrously scream at nothing at all.


When the statue finally does turn up (Zeffirelli actually provides us with two statues, but don't ask why), the servants obligingly make room for Giovanni's cosmic life-and-death struggle by disassembling the dinner table, picking up the pieces, and marching off with them — an unbelievably clumsy and prosaic way to prepare the scene for one of opera's most shattering finales. But why go on? The solecisms of this brainless “Don Giovanni” are practically endless. At least we are now spared those silly capering goblins at the end, although our hero still looks pretty absurd as he inches backward into Hell, squirming on his rear end.


Two singers manage to perform some good deeds in Zeffirelli's naughty world, and both deserve to be seen in a better production. Seething with nervous energy, Thomas Hampson portrays the Don as a dangerous, self-confident young sensualist, which makes the rake's inability to score and his obsessive efforts at trying over and over again all the more intriguing. When not overly pressuring his attractive baritone to fill the house, Hampson also sings the role with unusual grace and musical refinement. Cheryl Studer's slightly unhinged Donna Anna is just as passionately possessed and ambiguously motivated as the man she stalks. All the potential is here for a fascinating portrait, including a voice of exceptional quality — a warm, pure, shining soprano but one that, in this performance, never quite seemed to embrace the notes completely or to carry a soaring Mozartian phrase to its logical destination.


The rest of the cast was neither vocally distinguished nor equipped to deal with the impromptu production: a too easily winded Ottavio (Hans Peter Blochwitz), a callow Elvira who mostly grabbed at the notes (Patricia Schuman), a charmless and pitch-shy Zerlina (Marie McLaughlin), a bland Leporello (Paul Plishka), a gravel-voiced Comnmendatore (Sergei Koptchak), and a virtually invisible Masetto (Julien Robbins). James Levine presided over this sorry display with a heavy hand — a disappointingly ponderous and turgid reading from a conductor who once excelled in Mozart.



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