Dr. Colin Eatock, composer
  • Home
  • About Colin Eatock
  • Composing
  • Catalogue of works
  • Writing about music
  • Eatock Daily (blog)
  • New and upcoming
  • Contact me

Tcherniakov's Don Giovanni at the COC

2/13/2015

0 Comments

 
PictureA scene from the COC's Don Giovanni. Photo: Michael Cooper.
So here’s the thing about “Konzept” opera productions. Sometimes they are brilliantly insightful flights of imagination, offering a fresh and apt look at an old masterwork. And sometimes they are train-wrecks.

The Canadian Opera Company’s current production of Don Giovanni is a train-wreck. And like any good train-wreck, it’s disastrous in a spectacular way.


Arriving at Toronto’s Four Seasons Centre on Thursday evening, I discovered that director Dmitri Tcherniakov’s willful reorganization of Mozart and Da Ponte’s opera of 1787 was in progress even before the overture began. The names of the characters were projected on the curtain – complete with invented relationships. For example, Zerlina was now “Donna Anna’s daughter from a previous marriage.” The idea, I suppose, was to turn the cast into a rich, dysfunctional family with too much time on their hands. But in the end, it was the production that was dysfunctional.

The curtain rose on a magnificent wood-paneled room – the library of a mansion. It was a beautiful tableau, but it grew tiresome as it became apparent that this set (designed by Tcherniakov) would be used for every scene in the opera – whether it made any sense or not. Campy modern-dress costumes established the production as an “update,” to our own era.

What followed was so elaborately wrongheaded that it’s hard to know where to begin discussing it. Act I is a flurry of activity, as Tcherniakov finds things to keep his singers busy. However, much of what he has them doing is arbitrary and distractingly pointless. Why does Donna Anna rip open Don Ottavio’s shirt? And the director’s penchant for dropping the curtain on every scene renders the whole act choppy and disjointed.

Act II, by way of extreme contrast, is static and burdened with longueurs. For much of the time, the cast is simply lying on the floor, for no apparent reason.

And it didn’t help that conductor Michael Hoffstetter chose to re-enforce the uneven pacing of the show, in his leadership of the COC Orchestra. (The Chorus was kept offstage in this production – probably because Tcherniakov couldn’t find a way to shoehorn them into his vision.)

Our director also turned his attention to re-inventing the character of Don Giovanni. In this production he's not a swaggering rogue, as he’s often portrayed. Here he is mentally unbalanced, and by end of the opera he has gone completely insane. This isn’t a bad idea, perhaps – but it’s played out in strange ways. For most of Act I Braun’s wonderful baritone voice is reduced to a weak sotto voce. But in Act II, he throws himself into a raging verismo delivery, before expiring from a heart-attack.

Happily, there were also some other fine voices in this production. Tenor Michael Schade was in fine form as Don Ottavio – although he indulged in some unnecessarily extreme dynamic contrasts. And bass-baritone Kyle Ketelsen was a robust, rough-hewn Leporello.

Among the women, the best voice belonged to soprano Jane Archibald, whose Donna Anna was consistently clear, strong and supple in her delivery. Soprano Jennifer Holloway, as Donna Elvira, also had a strong voice, but her intonation not always entirely secure. And soprano Sasha Djihanian had a pretty, girlish voice, well suited to Zerlina.

The problem with Tcherniakov’s Don Giovanni is not that it isn’t what the composer intended. The problem is that it’s “Howard Hughes-crazy” – driven by bold, imaginative ideas, but hopelessly eccentric and deeply confused. It was a daring experiment that failed.


© Colin Eatock 2015
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Eatock Daily

    I'm a composer based in Toronto – and this is my classical music blog, Eatock Daily.

    When I first started blogging, Eatock Daily was a place to re-post the articles I wrote for Toronto’s Globe and Mail and National Post newspapers, the Houston Chronicle, the Kansas City Star and other publications.

    But now I have stepped back from professional music journalism, and I'm spending more time composing.

    These days, my blog posts are infrequent, and are mostly concerned with my own music. However, I do still occasionally post comments on musical topics, including works I've discovered, enjoyed, and wish to share with others.


    – CE

    Archives

    March 2022
    July 2021
    June 2021
    April 2021
    February 2021
    December 2020
    October 2020
    June 2020
    September 2019
    October 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011

    Index

    Click here for an alphabetical list of blog entries.

    RSS Feed

    Follow colineatock on Twitter
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.