The Season 2012/2013 of the LA Opera just started, and it is already leaving the audience enchanted. We were at the Opening Night of “Don Giovanni” on September 22, for the masterpiece of the Austrian composer Amadeus Mozart. A filled theatre has welcomed the orchestra and the actors; among these, Italian bass-baritone Ildebrando D’Arcangelo, as the legendary seducer Don Giovanni. D’Arcangelo is currently one of the most renowned and loved opera singers; he has already performed at La Scala di Milano, Vienna State Opera, Covent Garden, Opera Bastille, Metropolitan Opera and Salzburg Festival, and his repertoire includes Le Nozze di Figaro, La Boheme, Così fan Tutte, Il Barbiere di Siviglia, L’Elisir D’amore, Carmen, just to mention some.
D’Arcangelo/Don Giovanni has convinced the audience, dragging it into his dissolute life of passions.
But D’Arcangelo isn’t the only Italian “presence” in this opera. The text of Mozart’s masterpiece was in fact written by Lorenzo Da Ponte’s, also author of Così fan Tutte and Le Nozze di Figaro. At the end of 1700 Da Ponte worked at the court of Emperor Joseph II , where he met Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, an encounter who led him to the finest period of his literary career.
Da Ponte is known not only for the many librettos he wrote for different musicians, but especially for his ability to mix tragic and comic elements. Don Giovanni in particular had an incredible influence on the following opera.
Who is Don Giovanni? Men beware him, women fall for him. Eternal seducer and incurable liar, he makes one mistake, one only: he kills the father of one of his “victims”. Donna Anna (Juliana Di Giacomo) won’t stop searching for the mysterious man who murdered her father. She’s not alone, other women are seeking revenge: Elvira (Soile Isokoski), abandoned for a younger woman, and Zerlina (Roxanna Constantinescu), seduced right in front of her young husband Masetto (Joshua Bloom) .
Not even the tricks Don Giovanni plays will save him. His attempt to escape women’s revenge exchanging his clothes with his servant Leporello (D. Bizic) won’t last too long. Once the trick is discovered, the entire village is asking for justice. The mercy of the victims has no effect on Don Giovanni; when he’s asked to change his life and become a honest man, he refuses with disdain. But his arrogance will led him straight to Hell, in one of the best scenes choreographed at the LA Opera.
The incredible work of Ferdinand Wögerbauer (scenic designer), Peggy Hickey (choreographer), Duane Schuler (Lighting Designer) and Ed Douglas (fight choreographer), gave an incredible strength to both humorous and dramatic scenes.
Impeccable Music Director James Conlon, who will be leaving the baton to Placido Domingo for the shows of October 10 and 14.
With the orchestra, he accompanies the passions of all the characters: from the restlessness of Don Giovanni to the pain of Donna Anna, from the disillusion of Donna Elvira to the frustration of Leporello, from the ingenuity of Zerlina, to the jealousy of Masetto…until the revenge of the Commendatore.
The show closed with a standing ovation of the audience, who showed particular appreciation for D’Arcangelo’s and Di Giacomo’s performances.
Don Giovanni can now claim a new conquest: Los Angeles.
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