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OPERA REVIEW
Don Giovanni Springs To Life al Fresco
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By William Ratliff
Ever optimistic, the San Francisco Opera billed three Merola Opera Program performances of Mozart's Don Giovanni last weekend in Saratoga as "a showcase for future opera stars" under the stars.
Saturday's performance, was well-rounded, lively and enjoyable, did offer some talented young performers. (The cast was largely different from the one for Friday and Sunday.) Excellently directed, the production was based on the shorter Prague version of the score.
Among the men, the low voices excelled in the more rewarding roles. Bass-baritone Ricardo Herrera was primed for the title role by a recent performance of the opera under conductor Julius Rudel at Aspen. He was a suave, cheeky and nasty Giovanni. His voice was full and insinuating, while his acting--from sword fights to the smallest of facial expressions--was always convincing.
Equally impressive was Moscow-born Vladimir Shvets, a nimble comedy
actor who was a wholly sympathetic Leporello. In the part's many moods, his light baritone was as agile as his body. Oren Gradus was sonorous in the role of the Commendatore and imposing as the stone statue. In the higher male roles, Brian Anderson had some bright passages as he grew into the stiff character of Don Ottavio and Brad Alexander became increasingly forceful as the excitable Masetto.
Zerlina is the sympathetic though very impressionable heroine of the
opera, though her role is less fiery than those of the two donnas. With her light, pure soprano and convincing acting, Carolyne Eberhardt brought an appealing innocence, vulnerability and humanity to the part.
Donna Anna is a role that Mozart made as dramatically stiff as vocally daunting. Julianna di Giacomo had a full-throated and appealing
soprano though she was uncomfortable with some of the treacherous tessitura
of her major aria Non mi dir. Meagan Miller was a zesty Donna Elvira, the hassled lady of many moods, with a big voice and warm and animated delivery.
Scott Bergeson, visiting San Francisco from the Metropolitan Opera,
conducted with a sure sense of timing, achievning good coordination between pit and stage. From the opening notes of the overture, however, listeners were reminded that the trees and open air that brighten our lives also
kill resonance and pose projection problems for singers and
instrumentalists.
Stage director Graziella Sciutti, with long experience singing and
directing in top opera houses around the world, had a genius for the right
touches, large and small. She and coaches Lawrence Pech and Jonathan Rider
gave the generally dramatically capable singers that extra advice that made
the production spring to life. The scene of dimwitted gunmen
looking for Giovanni, for example, had touches that ranged from Goya to Gilbert and Sullivan.
Thanks at least in part to diction coach Elena Servi, the Italian
language flowed smoothly, though Superscripts would have been appreciated during the first act even though it was not quite dark. The
simple but versatile single set of Don Giovanni's villa was designed by Jay
Kotcher. With a few simple shifts, it was even convertible into a moody graveyard for the Commendatore.
Villa Montalvo is a beautiful, atmospheric haven for casually
celebrating opera and the arts. Still one can be so casual as to disturb
the mood. It was distracting to have dozens of people
tromping in an almost unbroken string to line up for the potties at the
edge of the stage, switching on lights, snap-locking doors, then lolling
around wondering if they should climb all those stairs to get back to their
seats. Better to have adopted the discipline of the opera house and sat it
out as not to disturb those who came to hear the potential stars of the
future.
(William Ratliff, a Senior Research Fellow at Stanford University, is a former music critic of The Peninsula Times Tribune and stringer for The Los Angeles Times and Opera News.)
©1999 William Ratliff, all rights reserved
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