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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Irreverent, riotous Don, 24 Feb 2006
Wow! This is different! A very original and challenging interpretation that will have the purists muttering darkly into their bubbly and the more adventurous opera fan applauding.First of all, the singing is excellent – Kwanchul Youn’s Leporello, Regina Schorg’s Donna Anna and Veronique Gens’ Donna Elvira being the pick – even the weaker performances (probably Bou’s Masetto and Martins’ Zerlina) are of a high standard. Don Giovanni and Leporello are a pair of streetwise toughs terrorising a group of pill popping, loose living hedonists. The line between the good and bad characters is less well defined than it is in the more standard treatment – only Donna Elvira attracts sympathy as a true victim. Everything is in half-light, with characters constantly moving from light to shadow. At the beginning of the opera the stage is a bare street, and by the end we have moved to an interior piled high with detritus of all kinds. This is not a production for the faint-hearted. There is sex (a lot of groping and simulated sexual activity), violence (Leporello suffers torture, characters are drenched in fake blood, and the final scene gives new meaning to the phrase ‘putting the knife in’), and plain old schoolboy filth (the Don urinates over the back of a sofa), but these are fine, because Don Giovanni is all of these things (amongst so much else). Veronique Gens wears a dressing just above her left eye. At first, one assumes that this is part of her costume – perhaps a symbol of the injuries done to her by Don Giovanni. As the opera progresses, however, it becomes clear (well, almost) that this is a genuine bandage. In a more formal production this would have been a problem, but here it works perfectly, lending the extra charm of hangdog appeal to Gens’ already superb performance. Perhaps not the ideal introduction to the Don, or Mozart, but a must for the more seasoned viewer who is looking for something different (the miniature mechanised hula-skirted party animals are not to be missed). Would Mozart have liked it? I think he would.
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