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The Broadway Bomb: 200 skateboarders have a death wish on Saturday
Published on 10/10/08
Published on 10/9/08
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René Jacobs completes his cycle of Mozart–Da Ponte operas with this absorbing set. Whereas a seething rage marked his Nozze di Figaro and an acid-sweet bitterness characterized his Così fan tutte, Jacobs’s Don Giovanni unfurls with all the “wind, impatience, passion” that Søren Kierkegaard found in Mozart’s opera. Dance rhythms predominate—lurid and grotesque in the graveyard encounter between Don Giovanni and the Commendatore, naughty and breathless in Giovanni’s seduction of Zerlina. Continuo recitatives (superbly played by Giorgio Paronuzzi), cadenzas and ornamentation are elaborately wrought and scoot off into unexpected realms.
Perhaps inevitably, the ensuing whirlwind tends to swallow up individual portrayals. Strongest is Alexandrina Pendatchanska, who brings both ferocity and finesse to Donna Elvira’s tormented outpourings. Sunhae Im is a delectable Zerlina, and Lorenzo Regazzo makes an earthy, heavily buffo Leporello. Kenneth Tarver lends gravitas and lyricism to Don Ottavio’s music; Olga Pasichnyk is sometimes hard-pressed but always noble as Donna Anna.
Jacobs’s Don Giovanni has in common with other admirable sets (Giulini’s, for example) one major weakness: its title character. Johannes Weisser seems too much the dramatic lightweight; his serviceable but breathy baritone conveys little of Giovanni’s overweening appetites and allure. Still, this account is well worth hearing for Jacobs’s restless, rough-and-tumble reading—one that unearths the weird dissonances, biting rhythms and uneasy figures that ripple through this most haunting and elusive of operas.
