Don Giovanni goes cruising

Mozart: Don Giovanni

Don Giovanni      Ashley Riches
Leporello     John Savournin
Donna Anna      Lauren Fagan
Don Ottavio     Ben Johnson
Donna Elvira     Victoria Simmonds
Il Commendatore     Graeme Broadbent
Zerlina     Ellie Laugharne
Masetto     Ian Beadle

Dane Lam, conductor
Oliver Platt, director
Holland Park Chorus and Orchestra

Holland Park Opera, London, 16 June 2017

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As so often at Opera Holland Park, this new production blew all the cobwebs away.  Naturalistic acting, increased contemporary recognition and originality to put many a major opera house production to shame.

The idea here was setting the opera on a luxury cruise ship circa 1910.  Anyone who has seen Titanic will be familiar with the divisions between first class passengers and those on the lower decks.  This provided the platform for the class divisions that are so central to the plot: aristocrats versus peasants.  Time and again the search and costume change scenes came over as much more dramatically plausible than is normally the case.  It was smart acoustically also, projecting the voices most effectively in a difficult open air location.

Ashley Riches as Don Giovanni

Oliver Platt directed a lean version of the score, not always controlling the orchestra's volume to allow the voices to come across clearly.  One voice that needed no accommodation was Lauren Fagan's Donna Anna, providing the most arresting moments of the evening with her dramatic and thrilling grip on every note.  Ashley Riches and John Savournin were a well-matched pair as Don Giovanni and his servant Leporello.

Lauren Fagan's powerful Donna Anna

Leporello's Catalogue Aria

The Commmendatore was consigned to the cooler after his demise and arrived in full ghoulish form at the climactic dinner scene.  How good to see a genuinely horrible Commendatore instead of the rigid, powdery statue which is the norm.  At the conclusion Don Giovanni is not consigned to the flames but rushes over the ship railings to a watery death. 

Don Giovanni! I've come to dinner

At the very end there were some ill-advised recitative cuts.  Zerlina/Masseto, Don Ottavio/Donna Ana, Donna Elvira and Leporello received no chance to wrap up their plots.   The only genuine misstep in a most enjoyable and stimulating production of Mozart's eternal masterpiece.