Don Giovanni

Teddy Tahu Rhodes and Shane Lowrencev bring an enormous amount of energy and comic relief to this rather dark and gloomy production of Mozart and Da Ponte’s musical morality tale. As Don Giovanni, Rhodes is everything the infamous rake should be: seductive, ruthless, manipulative, cruel … and terribly attractive! He has an extraordinary presence on the stage and as Don Giovanni we find not only the stunning voice we expect to hear, but an athletic performer, running down a mountainous staircase, almost leaping about the stage as he plans his nefarious exploits and creates his own, very physical interpretation of the wicked libertine.

As Leporello, his manservant (and stooge), Shane Lowrencev is equally athletic and convincing. His use of comedic timing and fast, long-legged movement merge with the quick musical exchanges that suggest and delineate his character as he cringes, criticizes and pleads.

Sir David McVicar and designer Robert Jones have created a sombre film noir mood for this relatively long (slightly more than the advertised ‘approximately three hours”) production. Dark walls loom above and reach back to an eerie graveyard and dark sky. Grey bones and skulls heap haphazardly below the walls. Into this, for various scenes, a giant staircase is lowered, taking the bleakness of the stage to higher levels.

The lighting (David Finn) is dim and dusky and the costumes bring little relief from the suggested gloom. Every performer is dressed in black and shades of grey. Even the wedding scene suggests the graininess old black and white wedding photos. There is, thankfully, some contrast in the ballroom scene, where the infiltrators’ masks and capes are decorated in glistening silver. In the penultimate scene, the ghostly stone statue of The Commendatore (Jud Arthur) swirls around the stage in funereal grey, and it is no surprise that, in his descent to hell, Don Giovanni is accompanied by grey, distorted, disfigured female furies.

Conductor Jonathan Darlington’s mane of silver curls is a welcome contrast to this somberness as is his deft control of the nuances of Mozart’s music. The overture is the key to the opera and Darlington and the orchestra are harbingers of the musical drama – and playfulness – that is to come.  “Don Giovanni  … is a work of dramatic contrasts but musical unity of the highest order” (Peter Bassett). “In no other Mozart opera is the musical temperature so high and the musical tempo so hectic” (Professor Roger Covell).

Don Giovanni’s “conquests” are portrayed by some of Opera Australia’s most popular performers. Elvira Fatykhova is a hurt and vengeful Donna Anna, daughter of the slain Commendatore. Taryn Fiebig is a flighty, defiantly exuberant Zerlina. Nicole Car is an avenging but musically emotional Donna Elvira.

His adversaries are suitably angry and aggressive. John Longmuir is the constant, long-suffering fiancé of Donna Anna. Richard Anderson is Masetto, the disbelieving, easily beguiled husband of Zerlina.

It is they, together with Shane Lowrencev, who deliver Mozart’s final admonishing musical message to the audience: “This is the sinner’s game; his life and death are just the same”.

Carol Wimmer

Images: Nicole Car as Donna Elvira and Teddy Tahu Rhodes as Don Giovanni; Taryn Fiebig as Zerlina and Teddy Tahu Rhodes as Don Giovanni & Teddy Tahu Rhodes as Don Giovanni. Photo credit Lisa Tomasetti.