Musical grossness

The latest revival of Mozart’s Don Giovanni at the Royal Opera, in Francesca Zambello’s 2002 production, now directed by Duncan Macfarland, is so bad as to be almost sensational. The production itself was never any good, and although I have now seen it with four largely different casts, in none of them was the title role taken with conviction, not even by such seasoned Dons as Simon Keenlyside. Nor has the conducting, which has included such eminent and long-lasting Mozartians as Colin Davis and Charles Mackerras, ever been better than somewhat disappointing. This time round though is a connoisseur’s item of musical grossness and dramatic nullity. The best thing about it is the opening chord, a fierce blaze of sound, arousing the highest expectations, and premonitory, especially for anyone who has seen the production before, of the blaze of fire in the finale, which virtually singes your hair if you’re in the stalls — though on this occasion I had departed in the interval, unable to bear seeing and hearing this sovereign masterwork subjected to such maltreatment.

Any operatic performance, with the tiniest number of exceptions, can only be as good as its conducting, and on this occasion Ivor Bolton ensured that overall it would be a wretched occasion. Once past those staggering opening chords and the rest of the slow introduction, the overture was thrown away in over-emphatic and rushed-sounding bar-line conducting, and we were alerted to the Early Music practices that the Covent Garden orchestra, normally so distinguished, were purveying, so that the strings’ playing without vibrato sounded undernourished and ill-balanced against the raucous winds. So they were throughout the evening, which had some of the most ragged playing I’ve heard for a long time, moreover poorly synchronised with the stage.