A hole in the heart: Salzburg Festival’s new Don Giovanni

By Hugo Shirley, 06 August 2021

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“the prevailing sense of emptiness is acute, reflecting the gaping hole in Giovanni’s own heart”

Reviewed at Großes Festspielhaus, Salzburg on 4 August 2021

Mozart, Don Giovanni

Teodor Currentzis, Conductor

Romeo Castellucci, Director, Set Designer, Costume Designer, Lighting Designer

Theresa Wilson, Costume Designer

Piersandra Di Matteo, Dramaturgy

Christian Arseni, Dramaturgy

Marco Giusti, Lighting Designer

Davide Luciano, Don Giovanni

Vito Priante, Leporello

Nadezhda Pavlova, Donna Anna

Federica Lombardi, Donna Elvira

Anna Lucia Richter, Zerlina

Mika Kares, The Commendatore

Michael Spyres, Don Ottavio

David Steffens, Masetto

Cindy Van Acker, Choreography

Vitaly Polonsky, Choirmaster / chorus director

musicAeterna Choir

musicAeterna

Romeo Castellucci directs a new Pelléas et Mélisande at La Scala

Laura Servidei, 26th April

The Italian director makes his long-awaited Italian operatic debut at the Teatro alla Scala in a production which perfectly mirrors Debussy’s most enigmatic creation.

****1

Straussian pastoral: Daphne at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden

Elena Luporini, 19th February

Romeo Castellucci's new production of Daphne for the Staatsoper reflects on our relationship with nature, subverting the perspective of Richard Strauss' opera.

***11

Bluebeard as psychothriller in Castellucci's mismatched double bill

George Jahn, 2nd August

Romeo Castellucci's intense production of Bartók's opera reaps its rewards in the performance under Teodor Currentzis, but Carl Orff's opera-oratorio De temporum fine comoedia feels little more than a drab filler.

***11

To die in order to live: Castellucci's Resurrection

Romain Daroles, 4th July

Following his Requiem at the 2019 Aix Festival, Romeo Castellucci surprises us with the purity and humility of his Mahler Second, conducted remarkably by Esa-Pekka Salonen.

****1

Castellucci’s makeover of Mozart’s Requiem at the Adelaide Festival

Brian Angus, 28th February

A work designed to be performed in church has become a dramatic music theatre event that captured and held me enthralled throughout in a meditation on both death and life.

****1

Barocktage opens with a murder: Scarlatti’s Il primo omicidio

Laura Servidei, 1st November

Romeo Castellucci’s inspiring and spiritual production lands in Berlin, with a superb cast of Baroque specialists and the B’Rock Orchestra under the baton of René Jacobs.

****1

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Hugo Shirley

Hugo Shirley is a Berlin-based writer and musicologist. He has written widely as a critic in the UK, including for The Spectator, the Financial Times and Daily Telegraph, and has held editorial posts at both Opera and Gramophone. He was editor of 30-Second Opera (Ivy Press, 2015) and has a PhD in musicology from King's College London, where his thesis focused on Strauss and Hofmannsthal’s Die Frau ohne Schatten.