Don Giovanni

Published Wednesday 15 June 2005 at 13:40 by David Blewitt

Daniel Slater has directed some superb productions but his take on Don Giovanni, which opened the Grange Park season, is a total bummer.

The text is apparently the Vienna version. Recit is cut back, the scene of Masetto’s beating-up is so reduced it barely registers, Zerlina loses her subsequent aria ‘Vedrai, carino’ and Elvira’s ‘Mi tradi’ is butchered nonsensically. All of which is unacceptable at a festival but presumably obviates paying overtime.

Francis O’Connor’s setting has a shattered mirror as ceiling, Chris Davey’s murky lighting design creating criss-crosses of scintillating light which continually obscure the players. Furniture comprises odd chairs and a Last Supper table on a revolve.

Sepulchral, non-singing extras in 18th-century gear sit at the long table and manoeuvre props. So, no companions for Zerlina’s and Masetto’s betrothal celebrations, no peasantry at Giovanni’s bash to reflect the irony of his ‘Viva la libertà’.

During the Overture Giovanni weds then tups Elvira and has sex with a consenting Anna, whom he promptly dumps. Is that why she pretends not to recognise Giovanni once into the action, resists Ottavio’s amorous appeals but sets him on to avenge her ‘rape’?

There is no descent into hell at the finale. Instead, Elvira stabs the Don for the ghostly Commendatore, then joins the remaining protagonists, who swagger on as Grange Park audience surrogates and tuck roisteringly into their picnics.

The singing is mediocre to dreadful, the acting coarse to bland. Stefan Solyom conducts a reading which does some justice to Mozart’s glorious score. Otherwise, it’s disgraceful farrago.