( Photo: © SF/Monika Rittershaus)

All sinful things come wrapped in fascinating aesthetics. You know the feeling: something that is extremely beautiful and appealing, but disquieting—too pleasurable to be ethically good. That is Salzburg Festival’s “Don Giovanni”: a spectacular dramatic installation, a grandiose musical project, a lustful conception; yet sinfully wrong.

First things first. This is a revival of Romeo Castellucci’s staging from the summer of 2021 with a similar cast; in spite of what the website says, it is not a new production. The main idea is that Don Giovanni is the incarnation of the erotic (“from agape to eros”), with a complete disdain for anything sacred. The Eros here is embedded in all the beautiful lewdness and commonality (a lighter version, perhaps, of Pasolini’s “Salò”).

The major appeal of Castellucci’s production is his spectacular visual compositions. His modus operandi is to produce a continuous flux of symbols and images that, though sometimes verging on the nonsensical, elicits in the audience a masturbatory frenzy of reference-decoding in the audience. It is a strange, but pleasurable, game for everyone. The director showcases his enormous erudition at a level so extreme that it exceeds all pretentiousness; the audience is extremely pleased with the idea of being able to recognize some of the stage symbolism, as if they were being congratulated themselves on their own erudition.

The truth is that even though such conceptions easily fall into a caricature of avant-garde theater, when exaggeratedly done (as it is the case of Castellucci and some of his kind, such as Angélica Liddell), the result is quite pleasurable. It is always nice to embrace a canon of elements, each significant in its own right, and it is even nicer to feel as if we were actually smart and enlightened—we call it “erudite music” for a reason.

Castellucci’s waterfall of symbols makes Da Ponte’s libretto more a series of beautiful compositions than a dramatic flow. In a certain way, few things are more operatic than that. The acting was intentionally mannered in the style of Ponnelle, but staged in way more radical settings: a church being undone, a marionette show, a suspended sports car, etc.

It is an arduous and perhaps pointless job to unveil each one of Castellucci’s references now (from his Venus and Adonis to Flemish painting, they are all nice). The core, to me, seems to explore the relationship between the erotic and art. The erotic, for him, is expansive, comprehending even sports practices such as soccer and basketball. The erotic implies an undoing of Catholicism and an embrace of a castrating asceticism that is not, however, lacking in beauty and charm. The moralizing journey of Donna Anna and her pet Ottavio, or the search for marriage that oppresses Zerlina and Masetto, are both dignified; they are just not as sexy as Giovanni’s path.

Musical Highlights

Nevertheless, the most unholy issue of the night was Teodor Currentzis’s conducting. I will not deny his amazing skill. Currentzis is an exorbitantly great conductor, that is undeniable—and I will write much about it, just wait—the problem is that, given the recent revelations of his strong ties with Putin’s regime (as catalogued by Van Magazine earlier this May), why can he still be conducting in Salzburg—especially after becoming persona non grata in Vienna? I do not know if it is obliviousness or simply political disdain. In America, Anna Netrebko suffered way more for doing significantly less. Hypocrisy and the world of classical music are not strangers, but sometimes, it is just too much.

Still, true to the old motto of separating the artist from the art—as if it were possible—, Currentzis is a great conductor, both conceptually and technically. First, he is extremely “old school” in the sense that the biggest star of the night tends to be him. Much ink has been spilled on how problematic the figure of the conductor is, but there is a charm in those baton-holders who can shine from the pit merely through their exaggerated gesticulation. Throughout the opera, I could perfectly see Currentzis’s hands dancing in the most musical fashion. It reminded me of Bernstein’s extraordinary choleric mannerisms (from that video of  Mahler’s second to even the West Side Story’s documentary). Yet, Currentzis has neither Lenny’s charisma nor his hairdresser’s number.

And even if one closed one’s eyes, Currentzis’s reading of “Don Giovanni” is extremely idiosyncratic, from his alterations to the recitative’s continuum, quoting some of the musical themes of the opera, to what is, by far, one of the most original takes in the opera’s finale. Each measure with him feels like a music that one has never heard that way before. He makes Mozart’s score overflow with improvisations and rubati, taking opera to the extremes. Who else would make Don Ottavio and Donna Anna’s vows of chastity at the end of the opera something truly honest and Apollonian instead of just a joke? Or who would let Federica Lombardi innovate with the most heterodox variations in the midst of her arias? It might not sound like Mozart—or, in better terms, the conception we have of Mozart’s music—, but it is rather interesting.

And there is a level of technical excellence in Currentzis’s conducting of the Utopia Orchestra that is rare nowadays—was perhaps always rare. The orchestra, even in the spacey acoustics of the Great Festival Hall, never dares to swamp the singers’ voices; they know perfectly well the distinction between mezzo piano and piano; and, more impressively, they have a capacity for playing together without compromising the instrumental solos. Many beautiful moments of the opera happened precisely when the orchestra played as a cohesive group even as we could also distinguishably hear a cello continuo, a violin, a horn, that was meant to be better heard here and there. It is a musical delight that rarely happens. All this quality, but at what price?

Illuminating Cast

On a technical level, there is very little to not like in Davide Luciano’s Giovanni. Beyond his more than proper vocal apparatus, the singer proves more than once how he scenically present he is: from jumping from the orchestral pit to sing an exciting “Fin ch’han dal vino” to his embrace of Castellucci’s original solution for the confrontation scene. Confronting the Commendatore, Giovanni actually confronts himself, forcing Luciano not only to sing his own part, but also to lip sync that of the vengeful victim of murder. And, if that were not enough, Luciano also needs to undress himself while spreading a white pigment all over his body (as if he were becoming a statue himself). There are many singers who can be scenically interesting, but few Giovannis have the physical commitment of Luciano without compromising their vocal performance or showing their body for simple personal vanity.

Perhaps I am being too finicky, but I still am not fully convinced by Luciano as Giovanni. As I stated before, there is no technical deficiency, but there is a lack of ease in Luciano’s singing that prevented me from seeing Don Giovanni as fully plastic to all the opera’s melodies. Luciano is, to my years, a bit effortful singing things that, with singers who posses lower voices, would sound smooth and breezy. His “Deh, vieni alla finestra” barely maintained a legato, and his piani were very conditioned to make his voice airier, instead of preserving some fullness of timber. In those moments, even with Luciano’s being such a complete artist, there was something lost. Even the audience, otherwise very enthusiastic about Luciano, felt a bit off (his canzonetta was left unapplauded).

The female cast of the opera was extremely impressive. Castellucci aimed to create a great sorority of women in the sense that they understood their objectification by Don Giovanni (who cannot acknowledge their subjectivity—given that his list of women is just a giant xerox machine). Although one might have doubts about the ideological implications—namely, that Donna Anna and Zerlina will live in a world of beautiful music unerotically performed, celebrating their own chastity—it is undeniable how musically original the work of the female cast was in achieving such result.

The first solution was to cast Zerlina and Anna sopranos with silvery pure tones. Nadezhda Pavlova, a soprano who can sing all the vocal acrobatics of Zerbinetta, performed an unusually light Donna Anna. Her voice is a spectacle in itself, with bright and rich high notes (sometimes almost without any vibrato); the whole tone is enveloped by a series of medium and lower harmonics that sometimes reminds me of lyric sopranos such as Lucia Popp, though Pavlova’s artistry deserves to be considered on its own terms. Her Anna is both tragic and idyllic. While, abused and childless she has faced what the production would seem to be the worst of fates, when Pavlova sang, the beauty of her singing sometimes sounded like the promise that fate would be overcome. It was therefore in her triumphal “Crudele! Ah non mio bene” that her character seemed to find its ultimate encapsulation: a voice of purity, waiting only to love tomorrow, when eros will be good again. Her variations—though unorthodox—emphasized the promise of purity in her character—and Currentzis’s rubati opened a space for her to shine. How can one forget her addition of a series of sustained high notes in the aria? It was a call for us to “feel pity for her,” but also to admire her achievements.

On a similar note, Anna El-Khashem sang a Zerlina that seemed way less sexualized than usual, emphasizing her victimhood. Sporting similar silky variations and a voice as charming as Pavlova’s, the character became less comic, and some moments turned out to be wittily charming, but not necessarily funny (in, for example, “Batti, Batti”).

Federica Lombardi, however, sang a Donna Elvira with blood in her eyes. Her voice is significantly more drastic than it was a few years ago. The tone is rounder, but also more guttural, to a great gain of dramatic effect. Her Elvira expresses a particular sense of urgency in undertaking her task, and yet it also maintains all of the character’s inner conflicts. Unlike Anna or Zerlina, Elvira is conflicted even in her revenge: while she despises Giovanni’s deeds, she cannot deny her desire and attraction for him and his doppelgangers. Instead of pursuing a comic take on the “la donna è mobile” trope, Lombardi makes the question of Donna Elvira a psychological one. While her strident but rather moving “Ah! Chi mi dici mai” is forceful but also effortful—everything that the smooth phrases of the other female leads tried to hide—, her “Mi tradì quell’alma ingrata” was rich, romantic, and a bit modern in its variations.

The male leads who were not Giovanni were ridiculed as much as possible in Castellucci’s conceptions—part of his plan of stressing what a world without eros would be.

But nobody was more castrated or mocked than Don Ottavio (or Don Otário?). With each scene, poor Julien Prégardien would enter the stage wearing a more ridiculous costume— from a boat captain in “E la nave va” to a queen, a nun, and even a highly-stylized Harlequin guarding the poodlest poodle of all poodles. Clearly aiming to use a character who never meets his desire to deconstruct the very idea of manhood, Castellucci had much fun. Prégardien, however, approached the role with an unusual sense of vocal dignity and lyricism. Beyond his superb voice, the German tenor gave the audience the gift of his charming phrasing—smooth and sweet. Both arias were masterclasses on Mozartian singing, especially one of the tenderest renditions of “Il Mio tesoro” that I have ever heard—there were no edges, no frictions, just elegant music.

Ruben Drole also suffered a lot as Masetto—his character was even physically mutilated. Musically the performance was solid—generous voice, proper Italian. The Swiss baritone, clearly well-inclined to comic roles, shone best in the second act, when it seemed that the purpose of his character was better explained to the audience: he is a sad, punchable clown. And we felt much pity for him.

American bass-baritone Kyle Ketelsen faced the hard task of singing Leporello. His performance was mostly solid—though a certain charm of his voice was lost in of the wide-open stage of the Great Festival Hall—, but Ketelsen did not (or was not allowed to) employ the same musical inventiveness as the female leads—or even Ottavio. Thus, even when I consult my notes, few memories are left of his musicianship. Even the catalogue aria became more a dramatic facing of all the women subdued by Don Giovanni, than a showcase of Ketelsen’s vocal skills.

However, in terms of stage presence, few suffered more than Dmitry Ulyanov. To be fair, usually il Commendatore does not appear much on scene, but Castellucci’s idea of making him an inner ghost inside Giovanni’s own psyche—though interesting—also had the effect of leaving Ulyanov’s face to be forgotten. His voice, thankfully, was not. A solid and looming commendatore, he actively made his voice blend away as a voice from the beyond, especially in the final confrontation scene—joining that select group of ghost-characters that old basses can sing.

In Conclusion

Overall, I really enjoyed watching this “Don Giovanni.” Perhaps its production is so spectacular that is hard to be uninterested—or not to appreciate the immense aesthetic achievements of the production. Does it mean that it was good? That is hard to say. Scenically, it seems that Castellucci, with abundant resources, can be such an aesthete that debates over the intellectual relevance of his readings fade in face of his visual effects—as often happens in theater. Musically, it is irrefutable that Currentzis made the piece his own—perhaps even too much so for more hardcore Mozartian listeners. I personally enjoyed it a lot.

But all this enjoyment comes with a cost: in times of highly politicized debates on casting—Salzburg’s decision to stand by Currentzis is problematic to say the least. It is true that they will not perform the political show of some American opera companies—we are in central Europe after all. But precisely because we are in central Europe, precisely because there are refugees in all corners of the city—including many exorbitantly gifted musicians who have been absorbed into many orchestras in the center and western part of the continent—is it strange that neither the audience nor the administration seems to care about this that much? It is hard to not reflect on what the true values and costs are behind such decisions, and about what really matters for some people.