Andrey Zhilikhovsky as Don Giovanni | © Glyndebourne Productions Ltd. Photo: Monika Rittershaus

* * * 

Mozart’s great serious comedy has often been a director’s graveyard, defeating them with its slyly shifting tone, its curiously desultory second half, its mixture of frivolity and terror, its double-edged commentary on human nature – and that’s before we even start to talk about its hero/villain. These days it seems de rigueur to have a (usually very predictable) unambiguous attitude to the hero, reflecting our polarised times, the denial of human complexity, a childish yearning for simplicity, for unqualified adulation or condemnation.

But real opera for grown-ups shouldn’t be like that: it’s complicated. So I was looking forward to see what director Mariame Clément might bring to this: she is a seasoned, clever and funny director who would seem pretty well suited to a piece that hasn’t suddenly become 'problematic' – it’s always been. And she makes a good point at the beginning (by means of projected animations) that Giovanni has been toppled from his traditional plinth as honourable if disreputable rebel (against conventional morality, God, whatever you like) to a gammonish representative of the patriarchy. Which certainly raises interesting questions about how to present him, if the opera is to have any point.

The religious rebel is a pretty hard sell these days, of course, and even the goutiest old groper must have noticed by now that the Giovanni carry-on is no longer exactly universally admired. What then to do with this opera, a work of such transcendent musical genius that we can hardly just bin it? Glyndebourne’s show starts very well, but falls rather spectacularly apart after the interval, when all the interest and tension painstakingly built up is frittered away, and the director’s focus vanishes. That focus comes in a first act that centres around an unexpected character: Ottavio, whose ‘Dalla sua pace’ stops things dead with a strong reminder that everything in Mozart is about love, and that this is the vital thing that Giovanni lacks. It’s not a new point, but it’s well made.


Victoria Randem as Zerlina | © Glyndebourne Productions Ltd. Photo: Monika Rittershaus

So you feel some sympathy for him, with this tragic hole in his soul. The scene is set in a sort of contemporary hotel, with a rather joyless hen/stag party setup for the Zerlina-Masetto wedding, and Giovanni noticeably the only character bringing life to the proceedings. The death of the Commendatore looks pretty accidental (it’s not well staged), and indeed as the show goes on, and the subsidiary characters become ever less interesting, you wonder precisely what Giovanni is to be punished for in such a striking way. Bad boyfriend? Emotional f-wit? Old-fashioned ideas about consent? Bullying his servant? All very naughty, but iffy grounds for such striking divine retribution.

Which is why the second half works so badly. Our rather contingent sympathies for everyone else leach away as their behaviour grows peevish and boring, and you feel that Ms Clément has a soft spot for Giovanni, even if she’s also modern enough to try to hide it. The idea of love evaporates in Anna’s constant grizzling, Ottavio’s hand-wringing weediness, Elvira’s bipolar hysteria, the vulgarity of Zerlina and Masetto (Mozart is really not very complimentary about this gang, actually). Key scenes are fluffed – the graveyard substitute in the hotel lobby is an embarrassment – and there is no terror, no mystery, no comedy, no idea really. The singers, lacking the motivation of any reason behind their actions, start singing notes rather than arias.

Nor is it an amazing cast, though perfectly serviceable. Andrei Zhilikovsky does his best to be charismatic (and most improbably 'like a real gent') in his pimp get-up, and sings with a lot of energy, sexiest in his recits. Mikhail Timoshenko’s hangdog Leporello starts well and brings the only comedy to the stage. Venera Gimadieva sang ‘Or sai chi l’onore’ forcefully but sounded tired by the second act. The same goes for Oleksiy Palchykov whose ‘Dalla sua pace’ was so strong, and Victoria Randem as Zerlina: ‘Batti, batti’ was sweet, ‘Vedrai carino’ much more effortful. Ruzan Mantashyan was a formidable Elvira, but hard to love. Evan Rogister conducted with a lot of zip, but lost control of stage-pit coordination rather a lot. So we’ll have to keep looking for the complex Giovanni de nos jours.