(Credit: Thomas Mandt)

Mozart comes to the German city of Rostock in the 2026 season’s production of “Don Giovanni.” Though the house is no stranger to Mozart, this is an all-new production of his genre-defying classic, and it is a staging full of surprises. Director Daniel Pfluger  and Dramaturge Stephan Knies have brought together an interpretation that turns some of the more problematic and dated aspects of this renowned tale on its head. Risky though such an undertaking may be – few would dare mess with Mozart – one could argue that the production team at Volkstheater Rostock have even improved upon the formula and certainly given the audience a visually stunning and narratively refreshing tale of duplicity, vengeance, and infernal punishment. Premiering on January 17 at Volkstheater Rostock, OperaWire was lucky-enough to catch the opera on its second night – January 22. This is “student’s night” at the theater, when scholars from the university can visit the opera for free, and the number of young people in the audience was a wonderful reminder that opera is not stuck in its ways, inaccessible, nor elitist, no matter the accusations and handwringing. In the winter chill of this Baltic city, the young and the old came out in droves to witness a truly novel and vibrant staging of Mozart’s most famous piece.

Female Protagonists Done Right – No Thanks to Mozart

Mozart was no feminist. His female characters – and the plots surrounding them – forever drip with overt misogyny. “Die Zauberflöte” is often criticized for a theme that is best summarized as “women are irrational and anti-intellectual.” “Così fan tutte” meanwhile extolls the curious lesson that “disguising yourself like another man and pressuring your friend’s fiancée to sleep with you is okay because all women are unfaithful.” Modern stagings of such operas are forever faced with the challenge of making Mozart’s excellent music and sexist story-telling work in tandem for a modern audience. It is a testament to Director Pfluger, and not the brilliant wunderkind composer, that this “Don Giovanni” empowers women and positions their stories front and centre. They are the protagonists, the leads, and their oft-feckless menfolk trail along behind. This is not to say the male roles are misdirected nor misused. Male protagonists are not reduced to elevate their female counterparts, but instead the men and women compliment one-another in harmony.

Donna Anna is a pink petticoat-wearing, hatchet-wielding, avenging Valkyrie who cannot rest till her father’s killer lies dead beneath her axe. Her beau, Don Ottavio, is a doting suitor who dutifully hops behind her, dragging their suitcases and desperately trying to eat his sandwich in just the right way – if only murderers and philanderers did not keep interrupting his meal and his ill-timed attempts at wooing! Zerlina, though written by Mozart as a naïve peasant girl, is here transformed into a fiery, passionate protagonist entirely in command of her own sensuality. Her on-and-off-again fiancé, Masetto, is a kind-hearted – though quick-to-anger – youth who is hilariously unaware of his partner’s sexual desire for him. Rounding out the trio of wronged women on the hunt for a “wolf” is Donna Elvria. She has no suitor, only a Vespa, a vendetta, and a Beretta. Despite being a woman, Mozart gives Donna Elvira some unusually interesting vocal lines. There is something harsher, brighter, and more aggressive than most Mozartian female leads. But this was because Mozart saw the jilted lover as a madwoman: it was not out of sympathy for Donna Elvira’s predicament that he made her sound this way. In Volkstheater Rostock’s production her madness is gone – she is at once strong and vulnerable, a proud woman determined to mete justice upon the man who wronged her, yet unable to escape from her own lingering feelings for him. It is a human interpretation if ever there was one.

Having seen this brilliant interpretation of the roles, it is hard to imagine another version. It may even seem distasteful to see a staging closer to Mozart’s original vision, where sweet women are weak and strong women are mad. A common criticism of modern interpretations of old and storied operas is that a director’s vision can run counter to the libretto – when what we see onstage tells the director’s story while the libretto tells something utterly different. When words do not match actions. In such cases, critics and reviewers often default to “what the composer composed and what the librettist wrote is correct – a director’s own agenda must be secondary.” Yet in this production of “Don Giovanni” the libretto and the music perfectly support the more empowered women and their (slightly) less-empowered lovers. It is hard to believe Mozart could have intended it to be presented differently, and difficult to imagine another interpretation when this one is so perfectly executed.

Finally! A Utilitarian Set that Works!

Operagoers in Germany, especially those watching performances in the East, are no strangers to the stripped down, barebones sets of modern opera stagings. These oft-barren stages with simple, brutalist set pieces are a cultural relic of the DDR and the Soviet Constructivist aesthetic that came to define the art of the Eastern Bloc. Industrial and utilitarian sets, indicative of the production lines and factory settings of the proletariat, did away with the flamboyant and aristocratic sets of formerly bourgeoise opera. Even now, decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Reunification of Germany, this avant garde approach to set design remains eminently popular: from regional theatres deep in the heart of the East to the opera houses of the German capital itself. Though on the one hand such an approach to set design encourages creativity that consciously steers away from the staid props and designs of traditional operatic productions – and to keep moving with the times and continue to innovate is how opera will continue to survive and thrive – these minimalist, hard-edged sets are often a smokescreen to cover corner-cutting. A reduced budget – ever a problem in the arts, even in Germany – often forces production teams to improvise, and a bare stage with harsh lighting can often serve as a way of passing off as an intentional choice a lack of budget – or, to be less charitable, a lack of creative vision on the part of the director.

In Volkstheater Rostock’s production, though the sets certainly pay homage to Soviet Constructivism, one cannot make accusations of a lack of budget nor a lack of vision. Pfluger’s intention appears to have been perfectly realised by Set Designer Martin Fischer, and the minimalist sets form a visually delicious part of the whole experience. Onstage throughout the production, regardless of scene, are cracked and pockmarked columns, walls, and balconies, seemingly of concrete, held together with girders of pig iron. Yet with the warm lighting and intentional use of space by performers and props, this brutalist setting transforms into the open and dusty desert between cities – where Donna Elvira’s Vespa first breaks down – or into a cosy side street where factory workers mill between the open tables of adjoining restaurants – where Zerlina and Masetto first declare their engagement. The warm, low amber lights make the chipped pillars and terraces resemble the outskirt apartments of many a Mediterranean capital city. In later scenes, with the intelligent use of dry ice and lighting, these same columns transform the stage into the tawdry halls of Don Giovanni’s vile palace, a cold and desolate cemetery haunted by ghosts, and finally the gates of Hell.

There were multiple occasions where one might have leaned back in their chair to take in the entirety of the scene. All elements of the stage fed into one-another. Not only was the quality of the music exceptional, but the entire experience felt like a single, beautiful, tangible whole. The costuming of the soloists and chorus hearkened to a nondescript historical period, thematically Italy of the 1950s or ‘60s, though never too specific so as to break the spell of the ‘poetic realism.’ Such vagueness in certain productions can be a result of a costume department that has an overabundance of vintage clothing from the second half of the 20^th century and not much else. Here, however, the choice of period felt very intentional and perfectly at home among the chipped columns of a homely but decaying Old World capital city. The props varied with the theme: sometimes a convincingly decadent – yet somehow rotten – spread of food in Don Giovanni’s chambers at the climax, and sometimes a cleanly stylized cactus, looking like a cartoon brought into three dimensions, which Donna Elvira, in a moment of terrific physical comedy, stumbles into with a shriek in her opening scene. Yet never did these stylistically different props clash with one-another, nor jar with the overall design of the stage. The lighting was a masterwork, bringing all elements into a homogenous whole, and suffusing the set with a sepia tone that highlighted the mid-20^th century aesthetic.

Donna Elvira’s Vespa – not so much a prop as a fully-functioning electric scooter that mezzo-soprano Kirsten Scott drove onto and off the stage on several occasions – was a character all its own. Once she has rescued Zerlina from Don Giovanni’s clutches (“Ah, fuggi il traditor” – “Flee from the traitor!”), Donna Elvira returns a scene later, leaning into the horn, to rescue Donna Anna from the same lecherous lord and his hilariously conniving manservant Leporello. The comedic timing of the scooter’s reappearance drew a cheer from the audience before a note had even left Scott’s lips.

Though a surrealist and stylized set that leans more into the minimal than the maximal, in this production the scenes still felt full and rich: a delightful meal of vibrant colors and sounds where the stage looked and sounded as one. If an opera could be a painting, it would be this production of “Don Giovanni.”

AI Raises Its Head

On the matter of paintings, and on a more critical note, this production makes limited use of Generative AI. It is not the place of your reviewer to weigh in on the discussion of AI and its benefits and drawbacks – such conversations already abound in cultural and social forums across the world. For the purposes of this article, a quick summary of the most oft-discussed pros and cons will suffice. Advocates for its artistic value state that Generative AI should be seen as a tool to help artists create pieces that would be otherwise inaccessible to them. Detractors argue that AI is incapable of creation, only of copying, and as such AI ‘art’ is only a simulacrum of plagiarized pieces – to say nothing of the environmental costs demanded for the generation of such works. Critics of the technology often add that for all the leaps and bounds made in recent years, AI’s end result still does not look quite right, often falling into the shadow of the ‘uncanny valley.’ Interestingly, this production makes cases for both Generative AI’s advocates and detractors.

The first instance of AI in the opera was also the most obvious example of the technology’s shortcomings. As the orchestra performed the overture, a series of monochromatic slow-motion clips of woodland animals gamboling, cavorting, and snarling slowly traipsed their way across a projection beamed onto a drop curtain that obscured the stage. All these scenes were AI-generated, and it left certain audience members cold. A complaint heard at the bar during the intermission was that the footage never built to anything. As Mozart’s overture expanded and added, bringing in new colors and becoming more light-hearted, the footage continued to show the same things: rabbits, sheep, owls, wolves, all slowly running through a fog. The most immediately visible flaw was the failure in anatomy that is so endemic to current generation AI – wolves had the paws of lions and too many rows of teeth while the ears of sheep inexplicably turned into the wings of cockerels. Though one could retroactively argue that this was the intention of the artist – this staging of “Don Giovanni” does lean into the surreal, after all – these errors were so inconsistent and directionless that it seemed more likely that the AI had simply generated a clip that was running too long to maintain cohesion. Unlike humans, AI is incapable of narrative flow, which is why AI clips are invariably limited to only a few seconds – any longer onscreen and the uncanny lack of pacing or direction becomes obvious, and things begin to spool apart – and sheep sprout wings. But a lack of narrative cohesion has a larger drawback too – AI cannot build between scenes to a visually homogenous climax. As the music built, the footage remained stagnant, showing more of the same, and for several audience members this left in them a sense of disconnect between what they were hearing and seeing. Thankfully, the vibrancy, chemistry, and human flourishes of the subsequent opera quickly whisked away these early presentiments, though the quality of the human art that followed the overture made the cold and unintuitive AI art of the overture itself stand out starkly.

AI was used again later in the opera, and this time to excellent effect, for here it became a tool to assist in the creation of human art and was not presented as the art itself. As Leporello taunts the distraught Donna Elvira, mocking her for ever thinking Don Giovanni could really love her, he begins to list all his employer’s sexual conquests – the hundreds of women he has “had” in Italy, Germany, Turkey, to say nothing of the thousands in Spain (“Madamina, il catalogo è questo” – “My dear lady, this is the catalogue”). To underscore the twisted comedy of this scene – “Don Giovanni” always has oddly comedic moments for an opera about getting revenge upon a rapist, and those moments of dark humor are elevated in this production – Leporello begins to take Donna Elvira and the audience through a slideshow. Projected onto a screen that has emerged into the cacti-filled desert behind them, Leporello clicks his way through an endless series of slides of women – each depicting one of his employer’s conquests. When the music is quick and the recitative fast, the images flash by. When the music slows, so too does the slideshow. What one sees onstage is in perfect balance with the music – Leporello’s gyrating hips, Donna Elvria’s mounting disgust and heartbreak, and the cavalcade of women.

The photographs have the brown-tinted, washed-out appearance of early color photography, and depict women of all ages and cultures dressed in the fashions of the 1950s and ‘60s. Behind them are plazas, palaces, and farmhouses. Each one of these women is AI generated. It would have been a gargantuan task for the production to have travelled to the capitals of the Mediterranean and photographed models in suitable costumes in front of such landmarks – and only slightly less costly to have photoshopped models photographed in Rostock into suitable vintage photos. Yet this would have been the only way to ensure production had enough photographs of different women to create the scene, unless they had access to hundreds of genuine historical photographs of women, which would have become an issue of distribution rights. The scene as delivered may well not have been possible without the strategic implementation of Generative AI. Ultimately, the production was provided with hundreds of ‘photographs’ of fictional women, ready to be displayed as the vile Don’s victims. The final image is of the face of a young girl barely in her early teens, if that. As Donna Elvira stares in alarm at this photograph, the significance of what it means for Don Giovanni dawning on her, the photograph briefly comes to life, glancing around shyly and sadly. Does it have the hallmarks of an uncanny AI generation? Certainly. But does this add to the horror of Don Giovanni’s crimes? Absolutely.

It’s a Jungle Out There

Having heard descriptions of this production before seeing it, I had some questions about theming. How could an opera combine Greek mythology with the visual aesthetics of “Roman Holiday” (1953) while all the leads were animals? I could not picture it till I saw it, and suddenly everything fell into place.

An underlying theme of this production is the predator-prey relationships of the animal kingdom. Maybe a bit on the nose if one is a cynic, but it is here perfectly executed. All the costumes by Claudia Charlotte Burchard were perfectly thought out. They echoed not only the vintage fantasy Mediterranean setting and the personalities of the individual characters (each has their own color “motif” that carries through all their costume changes), but also reflected distinct animals of the European forest. As the opera progresses these hints become more obvious. All in attendance at Don Giovanni’s masque at the end of Act one wear disguises that overtly portray the woodland creatures their characters resemble.

The animal avatar of Don Giovanni is the wolf, and at several moments throughout the opera, as he prowls about the stage, tweaking and sniffing, he pulls a wolf mask down over his face. Though this is an attempt to hide his identity, it telegraphs to the audience exactly the sort of man he is. He is dressed as the wolf when he tries to abduct Donna Anna and remains the wolf during his murder of her father, the Commendatore. Donna Anna wears the mask of an owl – an animal synonymous with wisdom and far sight in the dark of night. Donna Anna uses her own deductive skills, based on what she saw of the attack that opens the opera, to deduce that Don Giovanni is her father’s killer and her would-be abductor. This is at first refused by her doting companion, Don Ottavio, though he dutifully comes to hold his beloved’s opinion just as he happily carries her axe. Don Ottavio prances across the stage with the enormous ears of a rabbit – his character is portrayed as both comedic and utterly harmless. One expects nothing but sweetness and a rampant desire to marry Donna Anna from such a bunny of a man. Zerlina and Masetto, when pressured into attending the Don’s masque ball – all a ruse so that he may have his way with the unsuspecting Zerlina – are both given the masks of sheep. The combination of these animal masks with their wearer’s small-town naïveté recalls the phrase “like lambs to the slaughter.” And “slaughter” it may have been were it not for the intervention of Donna Elvira, who wears the mask of a fox throughout Act two. As a jilted lover whose life revolves around vengeance (or reconciliation, though she dares not admit it), she has become a huntress – a predator of her own, tracking down the wolf that ruined her. Don Giovanni’s slovenly henchman Leporello wears a natty, falling-apart bear mask, underscoring his predatory nature, just like his master, though the decrepitude of his own costume makes his bear a shambling, comic figure, rather than the apex sharpness of his master’s wolf. The villainy of Don Giovanni is evident – the score, libretto, and Grzegorz Sobczak’s acting make that fact unavoidable. But the application of masks, and the continued allusions to animals of the European woodland, heighten both his predatory ways and the vulnerability of his “prey.”

But how does this connect to Greek mythology? At the opening of the first scene, three elderly nonnas shuffle across the stage in their austere, black “widow’s weeds.” This feels right at home in the magical vintage land of not-quite Italy. But when they turn to face the audience, there is a cold surprise there – the clever use of white morph suits under the costumes renders the grandmothers faceless and featureless. They draw out a ball of red yarn, passing it one to the next, their eyeless faces staring out across the theater. They cut the thread as the axe falls on the Commendatore. These are none other than the Moirai – the three Fates, Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos of Grecian myth, who spin the thread of a man’s life, and cut it when it ends. They become an ominous, ghostly presence that haunts Don Giovanni throughout the opera. Unrepentant to the end, though increasingly wracked by a maddening disease akin to drug withdrawal or syphilis (exactly what is eating the Don from within is left ambiguous), Don Giovanni is oblivious to the Fates as they close in upon him. But we know, from the moment the Italian grandmothers first appear, that they will silently stalk the wolf throughout the opera – his thread is always destined to be cut.

Costume and Voice in Perfect Alliance

Donna Anna appears equal parts the ingénue, broken by the death of her father and determined to see justice done no matter the cost, and a shield maiden of Scandinavian fame, as she commands the stage in pink petticoats and an axe stained with her father’s blood. With a voice that soared with ease over the orchestra and through the challenging lines Mozart wrote for her, soprano Aurora Marthens received well-earned and cacophonous applause. This was especially thunderous following her Act two marathon aria “Non mi dir” (“Tell me not”), where she sweetly (and, in this staging, patronizingly) reminds Don Ottavio that she truly does love him and will consider his marriage proposal – she just needs to plunge an axe into her father’s killer first. When preparing this review, one was pleasantly surprised to discover that the Valkyrie qualities of Marthens’ Donna Anna are not purely coincidental – the soprano has played Gerhilde, one of Brünnhilde’s warrior-women cohort, in Wagner’s “Die Walküre” at the Wiener Staatsoper in 2020.

In green sporting clothes, with rabbit ears upon his head and a tin lunchbox containing his long sought-after sandwich, Don Ottavio follows his beloved wherever she leads, a perpetual smile of witless innocence on his face. He screams and cringes as Donna Anna recounts the night of her attempted abduction and her father’s murder, jumping into the arms of the ghostly Commendatore (played by Lucia Lucas) who is watching over his daughter – naturally Don Ottavio does not realize he is being held by a ghost. He has eyes only for Donna Anna, and the Commendatore has no intention of revealing his presence to the mortals… yet. Tenor Adam Sánchez has a nostalgic quality to his voice, sounding like a singer of another age, and brilliantly captures the whimsy of Don Ottavio with the famously difficult “Il mio tesoro” (“My treasure”). He struts across the stage, grinning blissfully as he twirls the axe that killed his would-be father in-law like a marching band baton, sweetly asking the audience to assure his beloved that he will avenge the man’s murder. What he does not realize – but the audience, with great relish, does – is that Donna Anna and her compatriots have already left the stage on the hunt for Don Giovanni, and Don Ottavio’s heroic moment is witnessed by none. Sánchez also proves himself an excellent comic actor. I lost count of the number of pratfalls and more subtle physical gaffs he peppered into his character – though one sticks out for the audible guffaw that rippled through the audience. In the finale of Act one, Don Giovanni draws a gun on his long-suffering manservant and attempts to blame the failed abduction of Zerlina on Leporello. Donna Elvira tires of the charade and draws her own glistening silver pistol and points it at the duplicitous Giovanni. Don Ottavio, trying his best, wrests the Don’s gun out of his fingers and brandishes the weapon. Sánchez makes sure his Don Ottavio holds the gun the wrong way round, clutching the pistol by the barrel and threatening Giovanni harmlessly with the handle. This little moment perfectly encapsulates Sánchez’s Don Ottavio – a good person trying his best who does not lack courage but has a vacuity of brains. Sánchez shares the role with tenor Hyunsik Shin, who performed the premier.

Donna Anna’s father, the Commendatore, is only seen in silhouette when alive, as he futilely fights off Don Giovanni before he is laid low. Throughout the rest of the opera, the father is a ghost – and as a ghost baritone Lucia Lucas certainly appears, with hair and makeup giving her stark white hair, a cavernous face, and dark-ringed eyes. She is every part the haunting apparition. When Lucas delivers the infamous “Don Giovanni! A cenar teco m’invitasti” (“Don Giovanni! You invited me to dine with you”) her voice boomed in the hall and gave all in the audience goosebumps as a palpable chill seemed to run through the room. Don Giovanni, having once mocked a statue of the Commendatore about coming to dinner, is now invited by that very same statue, to that very same dinner… in Hell. Never has a ghost made its presence felt so profoundly or movingly as Lucas’ Commendatore.

When she first skips onstage, Zerlina captures the working proletarian in dirty overalls, though the outfit is soon replaced by a simple blue-and-white checkered dress. She looks every part the sweet peasant girl that Mozart intended – though it is likely he did not count on her fiery delivery of the libretto, nor her lusty pursuit of the (sometimes) gormless Masetto. Soprano Agostina Migoni’s well-timed squeals of genuine girlish excitement and equally human sighs of exasperation made her imminently relatable – Migoni portrayed a sweet-natured and feisty “every girl” with natural ease. Though her Act one aria “Batti, batti o bel Masetto” (“Beat, O beat me, handsome Masetto”) literally translates to “beat me,” Migoni makes it very clear that she is in full control and indeed the physical one in their relationship – and the beating is not necessarily the sort that stems from violence and rage but from love and passion. Her shining, clear soprano brought both narrative nuance and contrast to her fiery interpretation of the character and staging.

Masetto, clad in jean from head-to-toe, is the quintessential small-town working-boy-next-door. Though quick to disavow Zerlina when he suspects her of infidelity, his pride only goes so far, and it takes only a little overt seduction to bring him back into her arms. The face-acting of bass-baritone Jiwoong Shin was hilarious in this moment, as he looked out into the audience, as if to check that we were all seeing what he was seeing too – a woman who wanted him. It also underscored the suitability of the mask and animal avatar that he had been assigned – Masetto was sheepishness made manifest. But there was still strength in his character. Though being dragged aggressively offstage by Leporello – sometimes grabbed by the waist, sometimes pinned to the floor – Shin managed to sing his venomous Act one aria “Ho capito! Signor, sì” (“I understand! Yes, my lord!”) flawlessly, without missing a beat, and ensuring his warm bass-baritone was heard at the back of the balcony.

In her opening scene Donna Elvira appears cursing her broken-down Vespa in a turtleneck, headscarf, and cat eye sunglasses, evoking Audrey Hepburn, if Hepburn tried to shoot Gregory Peck at the end of “Roman Holiday.” Like the fox whose nature she embodies, her costumes are all shades of orange, be they her riding clothes, her gown to the masque, or more simple clothes that she wears when hanging laundry at the opening of Act two. From her first moment onstage, it is Donna Elvira’s chic, vintage costuming that firmly sets the opera within its semi-magical time and place. Kirsten Scott’s mezzo-soprano brought a warmth to this typically soprano role that balanced beautifully with the lyrical soprano voice of Marthens’ Donna Anna. Scott’s entrance aria, “Ah, chi mi dice mai” (“Ah, who could ever tell me”), was a beautiful opening to the evening. The power and resonance of her voice, which carried evenly through her upper and lower registers, established the strength of Donna Elvira’s character – loving and human, not hell-bent and mad – and set the tone for Scott’s performance for the rest of the night. Scott shares the role with mezzo-soprano Anna Werle, who performed the premier.

Leporello is Don Giovanni’s loathsome dogsbody – and not the sort of creature one would normally support. Baritone Jaehwan Shim makes a strong case for the downtrodden – but nonetheless vile – henchman being one of the most compelling characters in the opera. His costume is the most unfortunate, as he slouches across the stage in a battered bowler hat and (almost certainly moth-eaten) fur coat, his mangy bear mask pushed up on his head. He looks like a down-and-out Winnie-the-Pooh and is the comedic – though not endearing – heart of the opera. As mentioned before, “Don Giovanni” is an unusually funny opera, considering its themes of sexual assault, murder, and infernal retribution. Without ever sacrificing the more tragic, violating, and heartbreaking elements of the narrative, Director Pfluger gives space for the comedy to grow – and Shim’s Leporello is front and centre of this. He elicited the first big laugh from the audience within moments of the Commendatore’s grisly assassination, when he asks his boss which one is dead – Don Giovanni or the Commendatore? A laugh following a murder – no mean feat, but Shim is a master of physical comedy, prop work, and face-acting. His Act one aria, “Madamina, il catalogo è questo” (“My dear lady, this is the catalogue”), one of the most famous in the entire opera, was a delight for the ear and the eye. Shim’s smooth and resonant baritone complimented his buffo acting as he indulgently taunted the heart-broken Donna Elvira, his hips thrusting as he produced a leather-bound book containing the names of the hundreds of women who have fallen victim to Don Giovanni. When his catalogue reaches Spain, and the 1,003 women therein, Shim began to unfold a vast centrefold within the book, truly hammering home the immensity of his master’s libido. The audience laughed while also feeling sick inside – the broken face of Scott’s Donna Elvira reminded us all of the human cost of such perfidy. Unlike many a long-suffering and put-upon henchman, Leporello never joins the good guys – he has no redemption arc, nor does one really ever think he deserves one. Yet one cannot help but like him! This is a testament to both the writing of the character and Shim’s excellent interpretation.

Baritone Grzegorz Sobczak as Don Giovanni is a physical and musical tour de force. He prowls about the stage, ‘sniffing out’ fresh female victims. Though a lord, he appears greasy and sticky, revolting to touch but somehow undeniably charming. As the Fates draw nearer, he becomes sicker, collapsing and convulsing when no-one is watching. Something is eating him up, though he never pauses to question what, or why. He is defiant and unafraid even at the mouth of Hell. In tandem with his twitching and shuddering, his costume subtly grows. In the opening scene of Act one, Don Giovanni wears a burgundy jacket that comes down to his hips. In later scenes this jacket has been replaced by a coat that comes down over his legs. During his final scenes, as he raves in his banquet hall, defiant of the ghost of the Commendatore and the summons of Hell, he stands in a long, regal gown that reaches down and trails across the floor. Is his coat growing with the revelations of his depravity, wrapping him more and more within the folds of his own malice? Once again, this is ambiguous – but it was a costuming choice that stood out and provoked. Sobczak’s voice is a rich, golden baritone that beautifully delivered the music – and the Italian libretto. Linguistically, the Italian dialogue melted out of his mouth with warm fluency and gentle ease. In contrast to this pleasant sound was the sleaze that Sobczak infused into his character. A greasy wretch, lost within the folds of his coat, on occasion Don Giovanni seemed to transform, giving in to his animal instincts as the wolf took possession of his mind and body. Sobczak’s hands writhed and twitched, as if on the verge of turning into claws, as he panted and slavered. There were moments when Don Giovanni slipped behind a screen and, in backlit silhouette, seemed to transform into the apex predator of the woods – these moments of raw acting were visceral and powerful. Sobczak brought a near-mythical quality to the monstrous nature of the Don and brought the house down with his interpretation.

What a Team!

The Norddeutsche Philharmonie Rostock played beautifully under the baton of Conductor Svetlomir Zlatkov. They seamlessly managed the transitions between recitatives accompanied by harpsichord to arias and ensembles with full orchestra. Zlatkov worked closely with the singers onstage, following their cues and clearly communicating through his intuitive tempi. The unity of sound between orchestra and singers is his triumph. Répétiteurs Hans-Christoph Borck and Danyil Ilkiv are taking it in turns throughout the season’s shows to play the harpsichord – an instrument integral to any Mozartian piece.

The Opernchor des Volkstheaters Rostock,  led by Chorus Master Csaba Grünfelder, supported the soloists elegantly, both with their harmonious voices and intuitive acting. They empathetically played factory workers unwinding on the terraces of back-alley cafes when Zerlina and Masetto announced their engagement. Several also played the more unnerving role of Don Giovanni’s staff. These members of the choir appeared as a detachment of uniformed soldiers holding tiki torches aloft – an allusion to fascist movements from across the world and throughout the decades, but hitting especially close to home here in Germany – as they herded the guests of the Don’s ball onto the dance floor with stoney faces and militaristic precision. Director Pfluger clearly knows how to work with a large cast and ensured that the scenes with both soloists and choir looked lively, lived in, integrated, and believable – not a distracting chaos of noise. We were seeing human beings, each with their own story – yet the soloists were always brought fluidly to the fore when the narrative demanded it.

The audience made their appreciation known with unbroken minutes of applause, as spectators on the balcony whistled and those in the orchestra drummed their feet until it sounded like peals of thunder were rolling across the theater. It is a rare opera in the east of Germany that provokes the audience to stand for their ovations and bellow out their “bravos” – but that is exactly what Volkstheater Rostock’s “Don Giovanni” did.