Viva la liberta: Don Giovanni at the ROH

Keenlyside as Don Giovanni.
Photo (c) Catherine Ashmore

I confess I approached the DVD of Francesca Zambello's Don Giovanni for Covent Garden with some skepticism. For one thing, I wasn't sure how Zambello would handle a work of Don Giovanni's density. For another, I had trouble imagining Simon Keenlyside's assumption of the Don. Keenlyside is an accomplished and intelligent musician whom I've been moved by in a number of roles... as thoroughly nice, if not actually self-sacrificingly noble characters. My skepticism, however, proved unjustified. It takes a little time for Zambello's directorial perspective to become clear, but the story that she has Mozart's opera tell is an interesting one, with the three women as joint protagonists with the Don himself. (This works surprisingly well.) And Keenlyside, in addition to singing with elegance and gusto, created a thoroughly amoral Don: cunning and exuberant, and boundless in sensual appetites (until the curtain calls, when he gave his Leporello an impromptu bear hug and helped the frail Sir Charles Mackerras on a step created by the sets. Niceness will out!) That said: the production may judge Don Giovanni too charitably, and I may judge the production itself too charitably, having been recently bored and bored again by Michael Grandage's kitschy creation for the Met. These caveats in place, I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed it. More subtle visual cues could have helped put across more precise ideas, but the casting was very fine, Mackerras' conducting was a joy, and the singers were admirably committed to portrayals of their characters specific to Zambello's concept.

Così fan tutte

In the wise words of the Beloved Flatmate, "Gender in opera is never NOT problematic."  In addition to recording and libretto perusal, I prepared for last night's Opera Outing by looking through essays with the trained scholar in me chanting "Problematize! problematize!" and some other part of me saying "...Happy Mozart?"  Everyone starting with the New Grove Guide to Mozart notes Così's history of being labeled as one of Mozart's "weaker" operas, and the problematic, clearly temporary nature of its "resolution."  (For me, this doesn't seem terribly exceptional: I always want to know what happens after the curtain falls.  If there's anyone left alive, that is.)  An essay in Jean Starobinski's Enchantment: The Seductress in Opera (did someone mention problematic gender in opera?) persuasively argues for the significance of the setting of Naples, noting the Neapolitan tradition of opera buffa with its stock characters, and the recurring sea and volcanoes of the libretto.   I read about the Enlightenment and social and theatrical sensibilities (as well as the use of key structure to indicate falsehood and sincerity) in Andrew Steptoe's  The Mozart-Da Ponte Operas.  A chapter in Jessica Waldoff's Recognition in Mozart's Operas (how could I not read a chapter entitled "Sense and Sensibility in Così fan tutte"?) argues that

"the opera's representation of sentimental experience [is forced] to divide against itself.... One has the sense that here as nowhere else in Mozart the lieto fine is a compromise with neither the characters nor the audience can be entirely comfortable.  In its resistance to the reconciliation recognition brings, Così remains true to sentimental experience."

It also remains problematic.  I threw up my hands and went to the opera.