Despite being owned by many of our great basses and baritones, the role of Don Giovanni was written for a rather moderately accomplished comic singer. That's why two of Giovanni's three solos are comic patter songs. The famous duet, "La ci darem la mano," is a persuasive disguise: we never see the true Giovanni. So what to do with a score in which the divas, not the devil, get the best tunes?

Instead of climbing scenery or appearing shirtless, or pawing and grabbing the women at every turn, à la Samuel Ramey, Todd Donovan was restrained, playing on the Don's consciousness of his social advantages. Perhaps Donovan's physique is not as arresting as Ramey's, but whatever the reason for the choice, Giovanni's method of seduction and escape has rarely been so sharply delineated. And yet, Donovan's Giovanni had physical presence on the stage, accomplished through good posture and the promises and threats he communicated through his eyes. His performance always verged on the too-mannered (and sometimes tipped over to the other side), but he had a good comic sense, and didn't feel it beneath him to show the Don's less heroic moments in all their craven comedic glory. Besides having a good sense of line in his musical numbers, Donovan was quite at home in recitative, the musical dialogue, despite some un-Italian overemphasis.

As Giovanni's even-more-craven sidekick, Leporello, Razvan Georgescu enjoyed himself immensely, showing off an ample, well-trained voice and a grab-bag of authentic Italian gesture that punctuated all his utterances. (There must be something Roman left in this Romanian singer.) He was hilarious in the Catalogue aria, sung stylishly as well, and was generally comfortable hamming it up.

Giovanni's main nemesis, Donna Anna, is the emotional focal point of the opera — it's her revenge that provides whatever coherence the plot of the opera attains. Jessica Muirhead provided a strong counterpoint to Giovanni, dramatically and vocally. There was no equivocation about her motivation because you never felt that she let go of the vision of her father lying dead. Hers is another weighty voice, yet with enough elasticity to manage the scale runs in her arias easily. She needs fuller, more expressive tone color for her top notes, which now are a little bland and whited out. But she is already accomplished in Mozart's style and sings fearlessly and emotionally.

Don Ottavio, Anna's fiancé, is easily made fun of, and more easily forgotten, except in his two arias. That was the case in this production, where some of his blocking made him out to be, well, a blockhead. Alec Jeong‘s tenor comes with a slightly watery vibrato. He was quite affecting, nevertheless, in "Dalla sua pace," the first of the role's great arias.

Kathleen Moss' Donna Elvira was even more comical — so much so, in fact, that the moments when an audience might have sympathy with her, such as her dignified address to Donna Anna in Act I ("Non ti fidar"), lost most of their weight. Burdened, as she was, with the production's most hideous costume (commedia dell'arte influenced? Or maybe Chuck Jones?) the result could hardly have been otherwise. But she was vocally deficient as well, undone by a catalogue of vocal ills ranging from poor intonation and wandering pitch, to bad diction ("hee" for "gli" for example.)

As Zerlina, Heidi Moss contributed her lovely, lyric soprano and an appropriately girlish sexiness, while her Masetto, Niklolaus Schiffmann, was as boyish and oafish as ever. His baritone does just fine in these roles. Sergei Zadvorny did some terrifically spooky roaring as the Statue, despite being dressed a housepainter.

The staging of the opera by director Andrew Morton was so conservative that it hardly went beyond the stage directions you will find by opening the Schirmer vocal score. That's fine, but Morton simply has to work on getting the actors to focus their attention on certain points of dramatic realism, in order to prevent his work from having that Garland/Rooney "let's put on a show" look. For instance, in the opening scene, when Leporello hears someone coming, Georgescu looked the wrong way first. He needs to focus on the noise before realizing he should find a way of escape. In the ridiculous sword fight between Giovanni and the Commendatore, the pair looked exclusively in the air, at the tip of their swords. Hint: when in a fight to the death, look at your opponent. When Ottavio swears revenge "by your eyes and by our love" he should look in her eyes. On a small stage, it's ridiculous to separate the two lovers at this point and have them sing out to the audience. They're swearing a joint oath; they should be together on stage. Masetto has to be more conscious of his bruises after Giovanni beats him up, rather than just pouty. And so on.

Barnaby Palmer's conducting is still somewhat stiff, but his expanded orchestra did well by Mozart's intricate score. The synthesized drum and trombone sounds were a little cheesy, but there isn't anything to be done about that. The mixed dances of the ball scene came out tentatively, but again, this was a problem of too many parts, not enough instruments. The balance was excellent and Cary Koh's lead violin playing was exemplary. All in all, not a bad start to what one hopes will be a long residency for SFLO at the Gould.