Don Giovanni “dans un bois (not so) solitaire” at Dutch National Opera

Already brought to Dutch National Opera five years ago, director Claus Guth’s take on Don Giovanni, originally created for Salzburg, returns to Amsterdam this month with an almost entirely new cast. As transpositions go, this is one that works well and leaves a lasting impression. The action is moved from Seville into a dark pine forest that brings to mind the first verse of a French song by Mozart, Dans un bois solitaire et sombre, K308, except the woods here aren’t so lonely! Transcended by Olaf Winter’s lighting, these woodlands, imagined by set-designer Christian Schmidt, become the stuff of legends, a forest of dark fairy tales in which Don Giovanni is repeatedly being tested as his final day turns into a long ordeal. If you scrutinise it more closely, this forest becomes crudely mundane; its undergrowth is littered with empty beer cans, picnic leftovers and discarded syringes. These are also woods where people get lost, where they wait at a bus stop for a bus that never comes, where cars break down and couples secretly go to have sex.

That we are witnessing Don Giovanni’s last day is clear from the very start in Guth’s reinterpretation: in the very first scene, the Commendatore, coming to the rescue of his daughter Donna Anna, fires a gun into Don Giovanni's stomach. Mortally wounded, Don Giovanni stumbles into the swirl of ensuing tribulations that lead to his certain death. Whether his attempted seductions are the desperate actions of a dying man who chooses to abandon the time he has left to earthly pleasures, or whether they are just flashbacks generated by the delirium of agony is left for us to choose. It does not matter either way – this story of a man facing his imminent death holds one's attention throughout.

Taking on such an iconic role as Don Giovanni for the first time must be a daunting prospect in any situation. In his role debut, American bass-baritone Seth Carico was faced with the additional challenge of having to portray the infamous seducer as an agonised man. He passed with flying colours, which should not be taken literally as a reflection on his vocal abilities: his voice is very healthy, thank you very much, handsome in timbre and well projected. But he managed to bring to his character the frenzied urgency of a man that knows he has little time left and nothing to lose. His aria “Finch‘ han dal vino”, sung as he showered himself with a can of beer to ease the pain, putting new meaning into “Dutch courage”, sounded particularly cynical, with an added sense of agonised fever. Not so much a “Champagne aria” as tradition calls it, but a dark swan song.

Adrian Sâmpetrean’s Leporello was an excellent match for this Don. His is probably the most physical role of all, in a generally very demanding direction, but the Romanian bass-baritone appears to have an innate agility on stage that allows him to climb tree trunks, jump from a bus shelter and do all these other steps and tricks without letting the madness affect the high quality of his singing. Add to that his refined Italian diction and you have a world class Leporello.

Next to these two protagonists, the other performances somewhat paled, although they were never less than good. Rafał Siwek's sonorous bass as the Commandatore turned gravedigger was suitably cavernous. As Don Ottavio, tenor Long Long appeared to have slight difficulties in making Guth's intricate direction feel natural but he compensated in a well sung “Dalla sua pace” which made one regret that his second aria was cut. Adela Zaharia's Donna Anna might be portrayed as particularly morbid; her voice was anything but – a strong and nicely velvety instrument. Amanda Majeski used her wide tessitura and great sense of dynamics to render the quasi-hysteria of Donna Elvira very effectively, but I would ideally have preferred more roundness in timbre in the chromatics of “Mi tradi”. As Zerlina and Masetto, Lilian Farahani and Frederik Bergman, two alumni of the Dutch National Opera Studio, made a delightful peasant couple, very well sung. The sound coming from the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra playing on period instruments and conducted by Jérémie Rhorer, was uncharacteristically lacklustre at times on the premiere evening, something I am confident they will polish up later in the run.