In the 1780s, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Venetian librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte were a winning team without an equal. Even today, the three Da Ponte – Mozart operas are blockbusters. In between Le nozze di Figaro (1786) and (my favorite) Cosi fan tutte (1790), Da Ponte provided Mozart with the libretto of Il dissoluto punito, ossia il Don Giovanni. At that time, Mozart was in Prague for the production of Le nozze. The Prague premiere in December 1786 was such a triumph, that Mozart was invited to return to the city in January 1787. The success of this visit generated a commission from the impresario Pasquale Bondini for another opera: Don Giovanni.

For the libretto, Da Ponte used the legend of Don Juan, a fictional libertine and seducer. Besides drawing on other Don Juan stories, Da Ponte essentially adapted and expanded a libretto by Giovanni Bertati that had been set by Giuseppe Gazzaniga in February 1787. Don Giovanni premiered on 29 October 1787 at the Teatro di Praga (now known as the Estates Theatre) and was a tremendous success. The opera transcends the traditional buffa genre. By using comic (buffa) and serious (seria) elements, Mozart created a new dramaturgic construction.

The opera tells the story of Don Giovanni, a Spanish womanizer, who kills the father (Don Pedro or Il Commendatore) of Donna Anna whom he tried to rape. Her fiancé, Don Ottavio, vows revenge on the unknown murderer. In his famous aria ‘Madamina, il catalogo è questo’, Leporello, Giovanni’s servant, explains to Donna Elvira, Giovanni’s forsaken love, the extent of his master’s womanizing. Meanwhile, Giovanni has spotted Zerlina, a peasant girl, to the great concern of her fiancé Masetto. During a feast at his palace, Giovanni attempts to ensnare Zerlina, but is stopped by her. She rallies all behind her to attempt to entrap Giovanni, including Anna, Ottavio and Elvira, who has successfully exposed Giovanni as the murderer. Giovanni and Leporello elude them once more. After a mistaken identity charade, Giovanni and Leporello hide in a mausoleum where Giovanni is warned of impending retribution by the ghost of the Commendatore. Giovanni orders Leporello to invite the ghost to supper. Giovanni is eating at home when Elvira rushes in and vainly implores him to reform. The ghost of the Commendatore has accepted the unrepentant Giovanni’s invitation and arrives to drag him to hell.

For the 2011-12 season, the Met invited British theater director Michael Grandage to direct a new Don Giovanni. The production opened in October 2011. I saw the performance for the first time in February 2012 with a superb cast (Gerald Finley as the Don, Kyle Ketelsen as Leporello, Marina Rebeka as Donna Anna and Ellie Dehn as Donna Elvira). Grandage’s staging, with sets by Christopher Oram, needs a good cast, because there’s not that much to see. The theatrical surprise effects fade away quite rapidly. The plot takes place around a curved sliding wall with three tiers of Spanish-style balconies and slatted-wood colored doors. This wall was best used during the famous Catalogue Aria of Leporello, in which he proclaims to Donna Elvira a list, by country, of Don Giovanni’s conquests. During the aria the wall opened and a second inner wall with more balconies appeared, with young enraptured women in every alcove, representing all of the Don’s conquests. The rest of the performance, with the obligatory peasant’s feast, the graveyard scene (this time with statues of hooded men in the alcoves), and the final scene where Don Giovanni is consumed by an impressive circle of flames, went by like a breeze. All very decent, traditional, and accessible, but somewhat timid, dull and above all aweless.

Don Giovanni is much more than a story of a womanizer. It is a story about sexual and class conflicts. Every character is a piece of a complex puzzle. They create balance and symmetry, as well as unity and continuity in the work. Zerlina, Masetto and Leporello are peasants and servants. They represent the lower, oppressed classes and the comic (buffa) elements in the music. They represent the light. The serious (seria) elements are represented by the actors of the drama: Donna Anna and Don Ottavio. They represent the darkness. Donna Elvira clearly evolves from one extreme to the other. In between these well-defined characters, Don Giovanni moves as a chameleon par excellence, a master of disguise, or a restless traveller looking for himself. Grandage’s straightforward staging perfectly tells the story by magnifying the humour of the work, but neglects the deeper undertones and especially the moral ambivalence of the opera. It leaves the audience with more questions than answers.

Compared to the February 2012 cast, the November 2012 cast was a B-cast. The Russian bass Ildar Abdrazakov as Don Giovanni was impressive, but sometimes overcharged and lacked the subtlety of the character. American bass Erwin Schrott sang excellently, but looked absent-minded. Maybe he too wasn’t convinced of the staging, or maybe he simply had an off-day. The best performance came from hometown boy Charles Castronovo who gave a convincing rendition of Don Ottavio. His ‘Il mio Tesoro’, with a warm and elegant legato, was deeply affecting. David Soar, making his Met debut, and Ekaterina Siurina disappointed as Masetto and Zerlina. The English soprano Emma Bell, sometimes sounding very shrill, and Susanna Phillips as Donna Anna, were mediocre. Raymond Aceto was a powerful Commendatore. The Met Orchestra was conducted by British maestro Edward Gardner who did an excellent job.