“Don Giovanni” / In stage presentation in Athens
The opera we attended on October 27th, shows the paradox of not being the first performance, but the first repetition of the work’s performance
The first public performance of the new co-production of WAMozart’s opera ‘Don Giovanni’ presents the paradox of not being the first performance, but the first repetition of last year’s stage performance of the work. The pandemic etiology distortion led to the also paradox of the recruitment of a de facto second Greek distribution after the one that shouldered the performance that was filmed for international broadcast and has already been commented on by the column based on its online availability (cf. DAWN 5.4.2021).
In this context, the tripartite partnership of opera theaters of Athens, Copenhagen and Gothenburg, although metaphorical of the plot in an updated spatial and temporal “place”, does not record remarkable originality, since it deviates from the archetypal and – 40 years ago – revolutionary composition. Sellers. He had dared to present the eponymous hero and his servant Leporello as an alter ego of the same person, who, as a drug dealer, justified contact with the various social strata of an apartment building. However, the crucial, as in “Marriage of Figaro”, social stratification is decisively blurred in the area of the hotel, in which the director John Fulljames is placed.
His interview, in the accompanying part of the October 27 performance we attended, maintains its interest mainly as a chronicle of the difficulties in times of pandemic, while allowing us to evaluate, keeping the necessary proportions, the filming as more complete musically and theatrically and as friendly to . the directorial vision, with one important exception, the scene of the death banquet, which worked a lot in its lifelike unfolding.
The genius-composed “hilarious drama” of the charismatic Lorenzo Da Ponte has behind it a performance tradition that renounces musicological obsessions with purity and has developed its own “performing version”, the one that considers the first aria of Don Ottavio and the second . of Dona Elvira which were received. And Vassilis if the writing of the first one that troubled Kavaya, who shone in the line, the breath control and the spiky coloratura of the second one, there was no reason to deprive Celia Costea’s powerful Elvira of a scene identical to the character.
Under the coherent direction of the Slovak chief musician Ondřej Olosz, in the continuation of the performance we count the lively living of the parola scenica by the experienced Leporello of Yiannis Giannis, the tonal fullness and security of Petros Magoulas as the Commendatore, the energetic, youthful Mazetto of Nikos Cosetto. Miranda Makryniotis’s Cherlina turned out to be lackluster and vocally colorless, while, as Donna Anna, Myrsini Margariti shouldered a role heavier than her vocal nature, with the exception of the coloratura that completes the second nobles of the priestess. Finally, the “hell unbound” requires, musically and acting-wise, a more dynamic and protean interpretation class than the one introduced by Dionysios Sourbis’ dignified Don. Tassis Christogiannopoulos of the cinematography remains the reference…