The Stage

Don Giovanni

Published Monday 5 July 2010 at 15:11 by George Hall

Designed by Paul Brown, Jonathan Kent’s staging is Glyndebourne’s second new production of the season.

Gerald Finley (Don Giovanni) in Don Giovanni at Glyndebourne Photo: Tristram Kenton

The visuals place us in the fifties, with prominent references to religious imagery and a graveyard where Alastair Miles’ murdered Commendatore returns as a decaying corpse that looks like something from Night of the Living Dead. The set becomes increasingly lopsided and cluttered as the evening goes on.

An overall problem is tone. Like many directors, Kent seems to view the piece as containing occasional comic scenes as opposed to being a comedy with some very serious interventions. Here there is rarely a laugh except when there’s a witty surtitle. Opportunities are missed to present Gerald Finley’s Don Giovanni and Luca Pisaroni’s Leporello as a comic double act, although the latter makes a fair attempt to be funny.

Finley’s Don is vocally strong but over-earnest - cool and handsome in his shades, he never really seems to be enjoying himself. Nor does Kate Royal’s Donna Elvira, who sounds stressed as well as, more understandably, looking it. Anna Samuil possesses a rich, substantial tone, well deployed in Donna Anna’s arias. William Burden’s Don Ottavio is on the dry side, but the peasant couple of Anna Virovlansky’s Zerlina and Guido Loconsolo’s Masetto are unfailingly perky and bright. With a hard-driven reading of the score from conductor Vladimir Jurowski, there’s genuine musical quality, though an essential thread within the piece has gone missing.