November 12, 2005
This production was advertised as having a “goth tint”, and I went with a certain feeling of trepidation, prepared for an evening of rollicking student-budget bad taste. I was delightfully surprised. Carte Blanche Opera have created a clever, funny, and immaculately professional production, and one that was really rather beautiful to listen to.
Briefly, the story is this: Don Giovanni is a libertine who spends his life seducing women with the help of his dappy but devious servant Leporello. The opera opens with Don Giovanni’s murder of the father of Donna Anna (his current target), followed by his attempted seduction of Zerlina, a peasant girl. He is thwarted, however, by the appearance of an old flame, Donna Elvira, whose revelations get him into quite a lot of trouble with everyone, especially the boyfriends of Zerlina and Donna Anna. Then, in a gloriously irrelevant supernatural twist, the ghost of Donna Anna’s father turns up embodied in a statue, and sends Don Giovanni off to hell.
The “goth tint” manifested itself quietly in a few corsets and, at a rather appropriate moment, some handcuffs for Donna Elvira. The rest of the time the costumes were sensitively modernised. Leporello’s shiny cameraphone, an update from the original little black book in which all Don Giovanni’s seductions (1003 women in Spain alone!) are detailed, was a particularly inspired touch.
The orchestra was flawless (in fact some sections were slightly better than those of a professional national company I heard recently). One tends not to notice the orchestra until it goes wrong. This one didn’t. The singing, also - especially from James Ballance (the Don), Jordan Bell (Leporello) and the sweet-voiced Lucia Simon (Donna Anna) - was superb and would have been well worth hearing even as a static recital. It was the acting, however, that made the evening. Danae Eleni Pallikaropoulos made a wonderful, puppyish, guiltily affectionate bombshell of Zerlina, well-balanced by Kath Cooper’s fierce and forlorn Donna Elvira. Tom West, as the Commendatore (Donna Anna’s father) was a splendid ghost-statue, somehow managing to be threatening and remarkably immobile at the same time; while the pair of rogues at the centre, James Ballance and especially Jordan Bell, made a hilarious, charismatic and slightly tragic couple. I shall certainly be looking out for Carte Blanche Opera’s next production.
Briefly, the story is this: Don Giovanni is a libertine who spends his life seducing women with the help of his dappy but devious servant Leporello. The opera opens with Don Giovanni’s murder of the father of Donna Anna (his current target), followed by his attempted seduction of Zerlina, a peasant girl. He is thwarted, however, by the appearance of an old flame, Donna Elvira, whose revelations get him into quite a lot of trouble with everyone, especially the boyfriends of Zerlina and Donna Anna. Then, in a gloriously irrelevant supernatural twist, the ghost of Donna Anna’s father turns up embodied in a statue, and sends Don Giovanni off to hell.
The “goth tint” manifested itself quietly in a few corsets and, at a rather appropriate moment, some handcuffs for Donna Elvira. The rest of the time the costumes were sensitively modernised. Leporello’s shiny cameraphone, an update from the original little black book in which all Don Giovanni’s seductions (1003 women in Spain alone!) are detailed, was a particularly inspired touch.
The orchestra was flawless (in fact some sections were slightly better than those of a professional national company I heard recently). One tends not to notice the orchestra until it goes wrong. This one didn’t. The singing, also - especially from James Ballance (the Don), Jordan Bell (Leporello) and the sweet-voiced Lucia Simon (Donna Anna) - was superb and would have been well worth hearing even as a static recital. It was the acting, however, that made the evening. Danae Eleni Pallikaropoulos made a wonderful, puppyish, guiltily affectionate bombshell of Zerlina, well-balanced by Kath Cooper’s fierce and forlorn Donna Elvira. Tom West, as the Commendatore (Donna Anna’s father) was a splendid ghost-statue, somehow managing to be threatening and remarkably immobile at the same time; while the pair of rogues at the centre, James Ballance and especially Jordan Bell, made a hilarious, charismatic and slightly tragic couple. I shall certainly be looking out for Carte Blanche Opera’s next production.