Don Giovanni or Don Amadeus?

Kasper Holten staged Mozart's dramma giocoso at the Israeli Opera

Believe it or not, but it's so obvious that Mozart portrayed Don Giovanni as his alter ego. Between, you and me, the thing is even not only about his really name, Johannes (as is known, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart baptised as Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, and Johannes is a variant of the Italian personal name Giovanny & Spanish name Juan). The truth of the matter is that he lucidly saw his true self in every detail of the seducer portrait. He was a genius and a womanizer, a sensualist and a ladies' man, whose amorous feats were not questioned. All his short life he followed his libertine itinerary, from the first emotions of adolescence to erotic games with ‘little cousin’ (the Bäsle) in Augsburg; and to a mad passion transposed from the alcove to the opera scenes. Despite his unhandsome appearance, he was the kind of guy who lives to be liked. Moving in aristocratic circles, he flirted with many noble ladies. Cheerful, cordial and impulsive, he was affecting the world with insatiable thirst for love and pleasure. 

If so, it's little wonder the title hero of the new Israeli Opera's production looks a hell of a lot like Mozart. The director of this operatic charade, a 44-year-old Dane Kasper Holten (who was Director of Opera for two Royal Houses, in Copenhagen and in London) had like to look at Don Giovanni as an artist who creates his comforting illusions and lures anyone he meets into his seduction game, into a symbiotic process of fantasy. The temptation is palpable, and it is mesmerizing. As a dreamer, as an artist, as a visionary or, maybe, as composer's alter ego blessed with amazing music, he's actually not a villain but a really Narcisetto, Adoncino d'amor, as evidenced by quote from The Marriage of Figaro in the opera's final scene – Don Giovanni's dining room.

Well, finally he landed here, on the Tel Aviv operatic stage, in the spectacle thought up by Kasper Holten and revived for us by Australian director Greg Eldridge. The Es Devlin' fascinating set and Luke Halls’ stunning video projections are a perfect match for the directing. De bon ton manifests itself in every detail of the staging, the backdrop, and in each visually innovation, from the 3D labyrinth of rooms and staircases to the ink splashes. In fact, an ink and a chalk are the major cast' tools. Leporello, the author of Giovanni' sexual exploits bestseller, is scrawling graffiti (an exhaustive list of the Don's former conquests) across the walls during the “Catalogue Aria.” These ink stains are busily projected onto revolving giant house – the construction of stairs and doors leading to nowhere. The chalk of varied colors underlines the characters’ extremely confusion, the eternal Mozart's imbroglio. Near the end the spotted characters will blend in with the surrounding space, by becoming just a bunch of words – gobbledegook – in retelling of the one of the most powerful modern European myths.

Giovanni's mind map is relentlessly projected onto black-and-white façade which blushes scarlet when it comes to love, or turns blue when it comes to romance, or turns pale when the ghosts invade Giovanni's troubled mind. Holten & Co do not need to borrow fantasies while the production has the stylish aestheticism we have come to expect from the British creators. Actually, architecture is becoming an actor (maybe even protagonist), not just a decoration – it transforms, eludes and changes shape, in a like Mozart's manner of composition which described as ‘creative automatism,’ i.e. each musical inspiration that he wrote down itself inspired a new idea, and this another, and so on.

A highly flexible mise-en-scenes (Holten forces his characters to climb to the top of the structure or suddenly appear from the dark apertures time and again) seems to grow out of score drawn with subtle colors, and sometimes quite toxic. True to the national tradition, British video designer Luke Halls populates the haunted house by the wraiths of Giovanni's lovers, whether real or fictitious (female ghosts, of course – apart from Commendatore). Anja Vang Kragh's multi-layered costumes exude elegance; say, Donna Anna's gorgeous pale pink dress is so unusual that gets inside your soul (and even sticks closely to your bones).

The opera houses have their own Archimedes' principle: a body submerged in Mozart is acted upon by an upward force is equal to his greatness.

Voyeur Leporello running about the list with references to Don Juan's conquests' and counting his countless belle and madamine, is Archimedes' equal in his maths knowledge. Similarly, Es Devlin' musically-inspired design with interlocking staircases on various levels arouses associations with the impossible staircase created by one more mathematical physicist, sir Roger Penrose: an object always ending ascending yet constantly descending and ending as an illusion. So that a person could climb them forever and never get any higher. Giovanni's mental landscape, like the rotating walls and staircases, inevitably goes in circles – that's why Leporello's aria Madamina, il catalogo è questo (attractive bass-baritone Guido Loconsolo sang it with a carefully measured dose of cynicism) get sucked into the downward spiral: v'han fra queste contadine, cameriere, cittadine, v'han contesse, baronesse, marchesine, principesse. And all of them appear through the layers of the Mozart's notes, on the body of a grayed house (and on the Trickster of Seville' restless body), to form a palimpsest.

Giovanni and Leporello exchange clothes, so philanderer can abuse Donna Elvira's maid; she'll be throwing off her clothes, she'll show us her nice little bum, which will shake up the bored audience – “too many notes, Mozart!”. Sure, a flash of bare flesh is little shocking. (On the other hand, Giovanni is such an ass.)

The fallen angel Giovanni with the face and the body of the Argentine bass Nahuel di Pierro who certainly has a flair for droll comedy, trilled away like a nightingale with his aria Fin ch'han dal vino, and in the same instant the wall behind him had turned scarlet.

The Commendatore (Italian bass Mariano Buccino), righteous man & satan in one, will burst with a bass somewhere above. Buccino possesses a remarkable voice, and let it rip with this marvelous music. Um, hard to resist. Poor guy Giovanni, Donna Anna's murdered father really frightened him off, as a Mozart's man dressed in black.

The whole thing is very classy. It's really amazing how the singers cope with the production unconventional demands. Each of them has a beautiful voice, moreover, they willingly spill it on the walls, like the same ink. Especially a noble couple – the graceful Russian soprano Ekaterina Bakanova as Donna Anna & the expressive American tenor Jason Bridges, managed to get into Don Ottavio. Only one Madamina aka Donna Elvira is good for nothing: we won't mention her surname for politically correct reasons since the tone-deaf diva Florence Foster Jenkins is standing right in front of you, in propria persona. Ok, not so (not quite as) ear-bursting – she still has a voice, albeit a hulking one, but she's a little hard of hearing. (What a pity that Mozart added for the Vienna premiere a new Donna Elvira's aria “Mi tradì!”)

That was way we're not able to experience the pleasures a high standard of ensemble singing, while Don Giovanni contains a great variety of ensembles (it's one of the champion ensemble operas of all time, as its seven duets, five trios, one quartet, two quintets, one sextet, and two finales, each of which comprise every possible combination of the six solo voices, far outnumber the twelve arias). Moreover, Mozart's ensembles are definitely a part not only of the drama, but of the action of the operas – he was genius in making individuals with the ensembles. Unfortunately, some of the key characters were singing in the same key as orchestra, but others seemed to be singing way out, all at sixes and sevens.

Maestro Daniel Oren who undoubtedly plays by the rules of good Mozart conducted briskly, lovingly, finesse, with customary passion and even some dashing. Nevertheless, I can't help thinking that Oren's musical statements in Puccini's and Verdi's mature masterpieces were much more expressive. Perhaps, the fifty-shades-of-voluptuous wasn't enough (there should be a smiley on this place).

At least, Oren's version of Mozart's masterpiece has the final sextet providing the conventional lieto fine as a warning to everyone else womanizer: Questo è il fin di chi fa mal. True, the moralizing characters sang from the wings, leaving this poor guy named Giovanni in his worst nightmare – eternal loneliness. And that's mitigated slightly the terrifying finale: you'll never be able to observe Don Giovanni falling into the abyss of nothingness.

Don Giovanni at the Israeli opera, Tel Aviv

Photo: Sergey Demyanchuk

* This production of the Israeli Opera is a co-production with the Royal Opera House Covent Garden