BY SPENCER DARBY
Opera Australia
Don Giovanni by Mozart
Joan Sutherland Theatre, Sydney Opera House, 1 August 2014
David McVicar’s acclaimed Australian debut of Don Giovanni immediately impressed with an enormous, descending fly-in set of stairs which created an ornate but grimy setting for the overture to pour forth from the pit. The Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra struck the famous D minor opening with a power and grace fit to introduce the doomed Don.
It is not merely a cliché to say that Teddy Tahu Rhodes was born to sing this role. He lives, breathes and heaves the role with an organic connection to the character, and with his powerful cavalier baritone, he is completely at home in the boots of opera’s most infamous philanderer. His voice, particularly in the middle register, was resoundingly masculine, but in contrast, his use of text in recitative passages as well as the fiendishly difficult ‘finch’han dal vino’ was extraordinarily refined. Rhodes and Shane Lowrencev (Leporello) had a genuinely funny and nuanced chemistry as they bickered, wrestled, drank, sang and danced together. Lowrencev matched Rhodes’ theatrical vitality and brought the fight to him, at times threatening to steal the show. Lowrencev doesn’t have an especially weighty bass-baritone quality at the bottom of his voice, as you expect to hear in Leporello, but his stellar theatrical performance and commitment to the drama endeared him to the audience for the entire evening.
Nicole Car was outstanding as Donna Elvira, providing a world-class level of Mozart interpretation and stylistic awareness. She threw herself around the stage according to her character’s change-with-the-wind modus operandi. She was well supported by her gang of do-gooders, all out to bring the Don to justice. John Longmuir was a strong-willed Don Ottavio, and Taryn Fiebig (Zerlina) and Richard Anderson (Masetto) presented an idealised, wholesome peasant couple. Anderson brings a level of class and stability to every role he turns his hand to with his refined and liquid tone. Fiebig was appropriately vulnerable and pure as the lovable peasant. Her line however, occasionally dipped below the level of the orchestra, but when she turned on the throttle she did an impressive job of the difficult aria ‘batti, batti o bel Masetto’.
The relentless darkness that pervaded the production was difficult to adjust to at first, but did highlight the supernatural, questionings of the soul that simmer below the comedic plot. The drama at times lost some of its momentum in the larger ensemble scenes and slowed down the pacing of the evening, but was usually saved by the ever-electric Teddy or Lowrencev. This was only a small hiccough, however, as McVicar pulled out all the stops in the penultimate scene, where Rhodes sank defiantly into a pit of heaving, embryonic, gyrating, hellish harpies; a fitting end for the Don, and a real show-stopper for the audience.
Opera Australia’s Don Giovanni runs until 30 August.
Image supplied.
