NY Times Review of Met's Don Giovanni: "Reckless in Seduction, if Not Onstage"

Peter Mattei (L) & Luca Pisaroni (R)

Marty Sohl/Metropolitan Opera

New York Times critic Anthony Tommasi has written a review of the new Metropolitan Opera production of "Don Giovanni." Readers are well aware that this production was plagued by the last-minute injury of Mariusz Kwiecien, who New Yorkers had eagerly anticipated performing the role for the first time on the Met stage. Tommasini's review focuses a lot on Michael Grandage's production, which appears to suffer from many of the criticisms that beset his "Billy Budd" at Glyndebourne, which is an overly conservative and cautious portrayal of the opera. Much of the criticism's of Grandage's "Billy Budd" was that he stripped the sexual tension from the opera. We'll be curious if this Giovanni is different when Kwiecien, who along with Randal Turner is known as one of the most sexually charged Giovanni's, returns to the cast. [FYI: The Barihunks crew is attending the October 25 performance when Kwiecien returns].

Joélle Harvey as Zerlina and Kelly Markgraf as Masetto; Jason Hardy as Leporello and Daniel Okulitch as Don Giovanni NYCO's Sexy and Vivid Don Giovanni (Photo by © Carol Rosegg)

Tommasini points out that this production paled in comparison to the "vivid" and "sexy" Christopher Alden production that the New York City Opera produced in 2009. We were unabashedly enthusiastic about the City Opera's "Giovanni," which we thought was one of the best ever produced. With City Opera slowly rising from the ashes, it will be nice to see some renewed competition in the Big Apple.

However, he did single out and praise the performances of the singers. Here is what he wrote about the barihunks.

[Mattei] was superb, singing alternately with suave, seductive phrasing and menacing intensity. At 6-foot-4, he was lordly, cagey, heady with desire and glibly reckless.

The bass-baritone Luca Pisaroni was a dynamic Leporello, singing with a muscular voice, rich colorings and agility. Handsome and full of bluster, this youthful Leporello exuded resentment while bowing to his master’s commands. But for the accident of birth, Mr. Pisaroni’s Leporello would be the nobleman and lady-killer. And there was some intriguing sexual tension in Giovanni’s roughhousing with his servant. 

You can read Tommasini's entire review at the New York Times online site.

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Duncan Rock's Video Diary of Billy Budd

If our email is any indication, then Duncan Rock not only has a lot of fans who find him quite hot, but a lot of colleagues who really love working with him. We started hearing about the hunky singer last year and ran our first post in January when he released his Elgar recording. There are a couple of themes in every email, mainly that he's fun, a great colleague, and "check out that body and those arms."

He is also a gifted singer and you can hear him sing Finzi and Mussorgsky at InstantEncore.

We also received a ton of email about the Billy Budd at Glyndebourne, which generated intense passions. One of the choristers was nice enough to alert us to Duncan Rock's video diary of the production. We've had some issues getting video margins to work, so you can watch it HERE if you have problems.





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WSJ Bemoans Billy Budd Minus Sexual Tension

It looks like the American press wasn't quite as forgiving as the British press when it came to Michael Grandage's Billy Budd at Glyndebourne. Both the director and the Billy Budd - Jacques Ibrailo - talked openly before opening night about their desire to focus more on Billy's goodness than the sexual tension in the libretto. Howls erupted from some within the opera community, but the British press still gave the production polite if not favorable reviews. However, Paul Levy in the Wall Street Journal was pretty forthright in his criticism.

Mr. Grandage seems to have eliminated the homosexual theme from the piece. As Billy, who is so good-looking that he is nicknamed "Beauty," Jacques Imbrailo radiates goodness and innocence. Most productions rely on the dramatic tension created by the feelings both Captain Vere and the Master-at-Arms, Claggart, have for the handsome able seaman, Billy, who has been press-ganged from his passing merchant ship, Rights o' Man. Neither John Mark Ainsley's Vere nor Phillip Ens's Claggart seems to have any sexual desire for Billy. Though it feels deliberate, this could, of course, simply be a failing in their performances.

In any case, it exposes a real weakness in the work's first half, in which Billy, unjustly accused by Claggart of inciting mutiny, stammeringly fails to defend himself, and in frustration strikes him dead with a single blow. The only witness is the unfailingly just Captain Vere. As he wrote to literary critic Lionel Trilling, Forster was more interested in Vere's lapse from goodness than in Claggart's "natural depravity." The novelist thought he'd written Claggart's monologue along the lines of Iago's in Verdi's "Otello," but in the absence of the sexual chemistry that usually conceals the poverty of the text, Claggart's Act I aria is just a statement of an inexplicable hatred for Billy. Forster's words don't even support a Coleridgean analysis of Iago and Claggart's characters as pure, unmotivated evil.

Read the entire review HERE.

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