Don Giovanni: The Graphic Novel

My favorite Shakespeare teacher back in college told me that Romeo & Juliet isn’t a tragedy; it is just a comedy that ends badly. Something the same can be said for Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Indeed one of DG’s almost illimitable points of appeal is the odd and unsettling mix the truly nasty and the falling-down funny. Not all productions of DG recognize this, or at any rate, not all dare to face it.

We queued up with a legion of wrinklies and crumblies this afternoon for a dress-rehearsal production of DG in San Francisco. It’s worth the trip, although perhaps not, as Michelen would say, worth a detour. One signal advantage of this David McVicar production is that it isn’t afraid to let the comic scenes be comic. Indeed, the staging itself seems to have been lifted from a graphic novel, with (at times) little boxes like panels in a cartoon. Never mind that the drama ends with the hero being dispatched to hell: you are mad to understand that an unsettling lot of this is just good fun.

This was refreshing, and it worked, and it was enough to carry the main event. Which was a good thing, because a lot of the other pieces didn’t connect. As Mrs. Buce was quick to point out, the production as a whole lacked the ambivalence that you need to make it truly unnerving. By all accounts the Don is a great seducer but you don’t get that many babes unless you are either (a) a world-class basketball player; or (b) a bad boy with a large dollop of sexual magnetism. The Don here obviously wasn’t competing in class (a) and he really didn’t seem to have it for class (b); he was, as Mrs. B said (rather dismissively, I thought) “trailer trash.”

This is important not just for the Don himself but for those round him: you want to believe it when Donna Elvira discovers that she may be just a teensy bit in love with him. And when Donna Anna sets out to take her vengeance against him, you want to feel that she feels that she might be just a little bit complicit in all his crime.

This didn’t come off in this performance, and it’s too bad: the performance has a lot going for it. But in the end, it’s such a great opera that almost nothing can spoil it, and this one, if not perfect, was as long way from spoiled.

Afterthought—pleasant surprise: Luca Pisaroni as Massetto, the Ringo Starr of the majors in the show, made a lot out of not a great deal. It was his SFO debut and here’s wishing him many happy returns.