Devoid of ideas

When you see two of the undisputed masterpieces of the repertoire in one week in one of the world’s leading opera houses, competently performed, and remain largely unmoved, you’re bound to ask yourself the question: have I been to these things, and heard them on record, too many times? It is, after all, possible to get tired even of the greatest works if you have experienced them regularly in the same productions, and without any special ‘magic’ ingredients, such as can bring back to life, or sustain, a standard work.

It was a question I found myself asking with special poignancy this week, after seeing two of Mozart’s greatest works in the space of four days at the Royal Opera House: Don Giovanni on Tuesday and Così fan tutte on Friday. Forty or so years ago Don Giovanni was taken by many leading commentators to be the greatest Mozart opera, or the greatest opera tout court, and Così was still a rather controversial piece, quite a few people feeling that the music was too good for the text. Now the position is almost reversed: no one doubts that tutte, and indeed tutti, fan così; while it’s hard to know how to take Don Giovanni, since he is the kind of guy who would be a Men’s Health hero if enough of its subscribers knew who he was.

Probably if you were seeing these Royal Opera revivals for the first time, you would find them, if not striking, at any rate not overwhelmingly tiresome. Francesca Zambello’s Don Giovanni has come round several times since its unveiling in 2002, and some distinguished performers have, in my view, been sunk by it. With ugly scenery, constantly on the swivel, and the fires of hell blazing fiercely at the end, it seems devoid of ideas, and the characters are no more determinate than they ever were.