Arts & Events

The operatic collaboration of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Lorenzo Da Ponte brought into the world three immensely vital, dynamic works — Le Nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte. These three amazing operas have continued to grace the world’s operatic stages ever since their creation in the 1780s. Recently — let us say, in the past twenty to thirty years — many new productions have set these operas in periods other than their original settings. Often, as in Peter Sellars’ adventuresome Mozart-Da Ponte trilogy staged at SUNY Purchase in 1987-88, the settings chosen were contemporary ones. Peter Sellars set Le Nozze di Figaro in New York’s Trump Tower, Don Giovanni in a New York City ghetto like the South Bronx or Spanish Harlem, and Così fan tutte in a chrome-lined diner. Of these three Sellars productions, his Don Giovanni was boldly harrowing and magnificent, while his other two Mozart-Da Ponte operas were often gimmicky, though endlessly inventive. 

Now San Francisco Opera has mounted all three of the Mozart-Da Ponte operas as staged by Canadian director Michael Cavanagh: The Marriage of Figaro in 2019, Così fan tutte in 2021, and Don Giovanni, the opening performance of which I attended on June 4, 2022. Cavanagh gives all three operas an American setting, with Figaro set shortly after the American Revolution in a new nation building a forward-looking future; Così set in the 1930s in a time of opulence; and Don Giovanni in a dystopian future when America is in decline and decay. Cavanagh further uses the conceit that all three of these operas take place in the same building at several distant centuries of this building’s existence.  

All I can say of Cavanagh’s stagings is that he manages to seriously botch all three of them. I have written at length of Cavanagh’s wishy-washy staging of Le Nozze di Figaro, notable mainly for its failure to pursue potentially interesting relations of race and class. (See my review in the October 11, 2019 issue of this paper.) I’ve also written extensively on the many misguided, indeed, woefully wrongheaded measures exhibited in Cavanagh’s Così fan tutte. (See my review in the December 5, 2021 issue.) Now comes a Don Giovanni that compounds the errors of the first two 

stagings and brings this misguided directorial conceit to a disheartening close.  

The problems in this staging of Don Giovanni begin with the utterly vapid video images that accompany the opera’s overture. Whereas Peter Sellars’ video images were stunningly evocative during this opera’s overture, Michael Cavanagh’s video material was vacuous, relying mainly on occasional flames and billowing clouds — or is it smoke? —to suggest the dark drama to come. 

Then, in the opening scene, Don Giovanni emerges from the house of Donna Anna with her in hot pursuit. Giovanni is not masked or in any way disguised in Cavanagh’s staging of this scene, though he is supposed to be masked or otherwise disguised.  

This failure on Cavanagh’s part to respect the traditional masking of Don Giovanni makes Donna Anna’s later realization that it was Don Giovanni who sexually assaulted her then killed her father inexplicable. Indeed, when Donna Anna confronts Don Giovanni at close range in this opening scene, she gets a good long look at her assailant. In Cavanagh’s staging, she even embraces Giovanni passionately, as if trying to persuade him to linger and continue their relationship. This overt move by Donna Anna virtually eliminates the ambiguity so central to this opening scene, where traditionally it is unclear whether she pursues her assailant to identify him and bring him to justice or because she is sexually aroused by his assault (and possible rape), and wants more from Don Giovanni than just a one-time violent explosion of lust.  

Further, when Donna Anna’s father emerges from the house to intercede on behalf of his daughter, he climbs down what looks like a metal fire escape. This random detail seems out of place for the neo-classical house built in the late 1800s. By the way, this house is now depicted in this opera as ravaged and falling apart, though sections of its neo-classical architecture remain remarkably intact. However, in an attempt to portray this house as now inhabited by various squatters, Cavanagh has Leporello push around a shopping cart loaded with his belongings, including the infamous ‘catalogue’ in which he has recorded the names of all of Don Giovanni’s thousands of women he’s seduced. Among Leporello’s belongings is also some random device he hand-pumps to throw shadows on the wall of the house as he reads off the ‘catalogue’s’ list to Donna Elvira.  

Look, I could go on and on in enumerating all the misguided bits in Cavanagh’s staging of Don Giovanni. But it is truly not worth the effort. Let me just add one more flagrant miscue on Cavanagh’s part. In Act Two when Don Giovanni serenades Elvira’s maid at her window, Cavanagh has multiple women come out as if unable to resist Don Giovanni’s romantic pleas. Included among these women is Donna Elvira, who at this very moment is otherwise involved in a heavy-petting, passionate embrace with the man she mistakenly thinks is Don Giovanni when it’s actually Leporello wearing the don’s clothes to lead Elvira astray. How in the world can Cavanagh make Elvira be in two places and in two very different situations at the same time? 

Enough! Now let us turn to the music and to the singing. Conductor Bertrand de Billy indulged in a few unusual pauses, most notably in the opening scene when Don Giovanni watches the Commendatore’s dying breaths. Generally, however, de Billy led a fairly brisk rendition of Mozart’s magnificent score. Among the singers, soprano Adela Zaharia as Donna Anne stood out. Her voice , as the Los Angeles Times noted, “is equal parts shimmer and opulence.” Australian soprano Nicole Car was an emotionally complex Donna Elvira, vocally portraying her character’s rapid emotional swings, from nearly hysterical desire for revenge to abject surrender to the Don Giovanni who jilted her. In the role of Don Giovanni, Canadian baritone Etienne Dupuis was dramatically convincing, if a slight bit underwhelming vocally. As Leporello, veteran bass-baritone Luca Pisaroni was vocally effective though his dramatic portrayal of Leporello weighed in, undoubtedly at the demand of director Cavanagh, too heavily on the greedy, all too submissive buffo interpretation of this role. Samoan-born tenor Amitai Patti was a lush-voiced Don Ottavio, though a bit lacking in power and vocal projection, except in his aria “Dalla sua pace,” which he delivered beautifully. Austrian soprano Christina Gansch was endearing as Zerlina, though her make-up and costuming transformed this peasant girl into a sassy and even sometimes perverse character. 

On this latter note, we must alert readers that this production of Don Giovanni was based entirely on the revisions Mozart made between this opera’s 1877 premiere in Prague and its presentation, a few months later, in Vienna. Included in this Vienna version is a scene that many musicologists have criticised as out of place, and, moreover, out of character for Zerlina. In this Act Two scene, Zerlina accosts Leporello, ties him to a chair, and threatens to torture him for his many crimes on behalf of Don Giovanni. (In Cavanagh’s staging of this scene, the chair seems, anachronistically, to be an electric chair; and the suggestion is that Zerlina may well intend to electrocute Leporello.) This scene is hardly ever presented, even in productions using other elements from the Vienna version such as the arias “Dalla sua pace” for Don Ottavio, and “In qualii eccessi …Mi tradi quell’alma ingrata” for Donna Elvira. Adherence to the Vienna revision of this opera also cuts important lines in the Epilogue that show the different reactions of the characters to Don Giovanni’s demise. Instead, the Vienna Epilogue proceeds all to glibly to the trite moralistic ending that the sinner gets what he deserves in the end, and closes on that preachy note.  

Set and projection designer was Erhard Rom, who provided the digital model for the 24 feet tall bust of the Commendatore and also fashioned the shredded American flag segments that hang from the house’s walls in many scenes, to remind us, he says, of the devastation that has consumed the landscape of this American house.” Costume designer Constance Hoffman tried, albeit not too successfully, to differentiate between the tawdry lower class people and the elegant dress of the upper class. In conclusion, all I can say is I hope director Michael Cavanagh will never again be invited to stage another opera at San Francisco Opera. With his Mozart-Da Ponte trilogy he has all too clearly demonstrated his inability to do the slightest justice to these universally acknowledged masterpieces of the opera repertoire.