MUSIC

Bristol Hippodrome (Tue 8 Nov)

Hearing Leporello’s ‘black book’ aria (in which he lists Don Giovanni’s bunga-bunga conquests) as Berlusconi’s political world imploded, had a certain piquancy; but in truth John Caird’s new production of Mozart’s ambiguous masterpiece isn’t playing the contemporary card. Far from it. The setting is an 18th-century Spain darker than a Toreador’s five o’clock shadow, dominated by an evocation of Rodin’s ‘Gates of Hell’ and inclined to tableau monumentality in place of the acutely observed characterisation that made Katie Mitchell’s ‘Katya Kabanova’ the following night such an outstanding piece of theatre. Caird also succumbed to a few crass details such as the inanely skipping peasants and cuckold’s horns, as well as a crude parting shot: a risible statue of the Don supposedly caught headlong en route to a brimstone-licked eternity. Musically Lothar Koenigs’s conducting responded in kind, harking back to the ‘big Mozart’ days of a Karl Bohm (his direction of ‘Katya’, incidentally, was positively incandescent). The fuse burned fitfully bright, but the firework itself refused to ignite! David Kempster’s Don Giovanni (more cup of Horlicks than sex bomb) was competently sung, Carlo Malinverno’s Commendatore started well, but his spell in the tomb seemed to have withered the vocal chords by the time he returned from the dead for a spot of ‘Come Dine with Me’. At her best, Camilla Roberts earthed the pain in Donna Anna’s showcase arias, and David Soar was a personable enough Leporello. But alongside the flair and acuity of ‘Katya’, a serviceable ‘Don’ rather than a great one. (Paul Riley)

Copyright Paul Riley 2011