Welcome to a very good production of Mozart's Don Giovanni.
Friday's staging Vienna's Theater an Der Wien did not break new ground - the production first premiered in 2006.
But it has weathered well.
Directed by Keith Warner, this Don is more than a manic casanova who has had his way with more than 2,000 women in his life. The man is funny, tender, menacing
- and ultimately pitiable, as he expires on stage in a plexi-glass case smeared by his own blood, rather than renouncing his licentious life.
Much of the credit goes to Erwin Schrott, a.k.a. Mr. Anna Netrebko.
Built like a god, and with a voice to match, Schrott's Don Giovanni captivated the sellout crowd in the sculpted and gilt theater on the banks of Vienna's huge farmer's market.
Brutal? Yes, stabbing the father defending the honor of his daughter. Contemptible for the way he treats women as playthings? Surely.
But above and beyond all, Schrott's Don was human, from the beginning - as a young rake concerned only with improving his "score"
- to the final moments, when old but unrepentant, he goes to his own private hell.
A sinner? Yes, but above all, a man who remains true to himself.
Darkness. Death. Suffering. Mozart and librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte had it otherwise in the original, with all the main characters wronged by the Don taking to the stage one more time to sing of their personal redemption, now that the evildoer had been dragged to the eternal fires in a scene that they meant to be merely symbolic
- not bloody.
Not Friday. The stage falls as the hero-villain expires. A dark ending at odds with the
'dramma giocoso" - jocular drama - envisaged by Mozart and Da Ponte. But one that leaves a more lasting impression.
And if Schrott had star qualities, the stage was a veritable Milky Way on Friday.
