Notes from the 2024 Salzburg Festival ( 5 ) Don Giovanni • Currentzis • Castellucci

Opera • Don Giovanni • Currentzis • Utopia Orchestra

Also reviewed for Die Presse: „Don Giovanni“ bei den Salzburger Festspielen: Jubel für weiße Bilderkunst

ALL PICTURES (DETAILS) COURTESY SALZBURG FESTIVAL, © Monika Rittershaus. CLICK FOR THE WHOLE PICTURE.

50 Shades of White: Currentzis’ and Castellucci’s Don Giovanni Triumpans/span>

Robert Castellucci’s Don Giovanniwas first performed at the 2021 Salzburg Festival. For the premiere of the revival, the production has changed only in some small details. It still begins with a professional crew of movers clearing out a church. By the time they get to taking down the renaissance crucifix from the wall, the overture bursts on the scene, courtesy Teodor Currentzis and his Utopia Orchestra, which is in essence his MusicAeterna Orchestra, but the West-European edition, to avoid unnecessary controversy about a Russian orchestra performing in Europe. (More about that, in a bit.)

Whether the pre-overture action means to suggest that art is replacing religion is up for speculation. But they must clean house. Perhaps to get rid of clichés and old-fashioned ideas about Don Giovanni. Or simply to make room for this production. Lots and lots of white room. So white, in fact, and in so many different warm and cool shades, sometimes draped with vast sheets of cloth, and brilliantly lit, one might have mistaken it for a Dieter Dorn production, except with a slew of animals making witty cameos: A goat, a poodle, and a rat!

The Dieter Dorn comparison might not even be so off the mark, because despite the overwhelming, wafting pictures that Castellucci painted unto the stage – set, costumes and lighting all being one homogenous one – his production is essentially a fairly conventional chamber play, which relies on the actor-singers to bring it to life. And that they did!

Homogenous Ensemble

The Singers were a very homogenous, very satisfying ensemble. No reasonable person would have attended this Don Giovanni for any one particularly singer – and yet, the vocal offering was excellent. Nadezhda Pavlova’s Donna Anna, for example, who got the loudest ovations: Strong-voiced and soaring above all, when necessary. Or the much appreciated Federica Lombardi’s Elvira, touching, half-motherly, half-seductive, with a nicely low timbre. Anna El-Khashem’s minx of a Zerlina was a little muted, but the way her voice betrayed experience-beyond-her-years worked nicely with her character, who is rather more worldly than her oaf of a husband-to-be, Masetto (Ruben Drole: smokey, sturdy, blunted – all befitting his character). This becomes deliciously obvious, when she rather enjoys being tied up with a bondage rope by Don Giovanni, whereas her encouraging “Batti, batti, o bel Masetto” is rather lost on the poor chap, who doesn’t, much to Zerlina’s resigned disappointment, get her drift.

The fact that Don Giovanni are just about doppelgängers reminds of Peter Sellars’ 80s production, where he cast the rôles with the Perry twins. Kyle Ketelsen’s Leporello, dark-hued and gruff, and Davide Luciano’s all-in Don G., steady and with a warm timbre, and never, never prone to barking, hit all the marks – and especially Luciano embodied the personified id. Superstars in the Pit None of this would have been as satisfactorily possible, had it not been for the support from the Orchestra. The Utopia Orchestra offered precision, force, and lots of bite – but also oodles of transparency – to a degree that you simply don’t get from an orchestra where, not a minute into their scheduled lunchbreak, the first trombone already raises their hand. From full-out attack to the height of tender reticence, even the smallest phrase was fully thought-out and shaped. Any sense of harmlessness is out of the question, in such a performance and if anyone could possibly niggle, it would be about this approach being a bit too much of a good thing. Except, not really. The fortepiano had inspired, free-wheeling passages, with ‘planned-improvisatory’ contributions that even included a bit of late Beethoven, to underline the seriousness of Act 2. The consequence was great enthusiasm for the music and near instant, unanimous standing ovations for Teodor Currentzis and his musicians.

If one only followed the “Currentzis Question” through social media, one might get the idea that he’s controversial. And yes, there are enough bigots out there – well, one, specifically – who make a point out of trolling Russian artists (not that Currentzis is Russian – but he works there) that don’t kowtow to their demands for explicit renunciation of all things Putin… and all consequences for their careers (and the livelihood of the musicians that rely on them) be damned… and some cowards who will immediately try to distance themselves from presumed controversy or Twitter-pressure.

In Salzburg, the audience couldn’t possibly care less about this one-man witch-hunt against Currentzis (who has, in any case, shown his true colors by immediately programming Ukrainian works in the aftermath of the Russian invasion, and the Britten War Requiem). What they want is great music-making. And that they get in spades from the weirdo-conductor and his supremely willing band of musical Nibelungs.

Dramma giocoso

For all the grandness of the production’s sets, populated with 150 choreographed women of all ages, shapes, and types – a none-too-subtle but perfectly effective manifestation of Don’s “catalogue” – Castellucci does not leave the “giocoso” part of Don Giovanni unattended to. (Unlike Glaus Guth, whose perfect Giovanni was all bleak and dark.) Of course, playing up the comedic element of the story rarely works well; least of all when the Don is played as a sort of oversexed Falstaff. This is something that Castellucci fastidiously avoids. The laughs come from other corners. Like Masetto’s hiding place, from which a (live!) rat scurries across stage, as he is discovered. His shriek might have been real, too. Chuckles also ripple through the Festspielhaus, when Donna Elvira’s two little kids are chasing Daddy Giovanni, who is distinctly put off by these two unintended consequences clinging to his legs.

But the comedic coup de théâtre is the treatment of that big fat zero of the opera, Don Ottavio, that ineffectual bloviator, who sings much and does absolutely nothing, except stand on the sidelines making helpful comments like an acquaintance telling you that you’re putting the Ikea closet together all wrong. Every time Castellucci and his Theresa Wilson, his costume-assistant, send Ottavio – who starts out looking like a posh hobby dictator in his silky mess uniform – out on stage, they stuff him into a yet-still-more ridiculous costume: A Pierrot with a coiffed (real) poodle. The King of Jerusalem. As a nun. And the more earnestly Ottavio sings, the more pathetic – and hilarious – it becomes. Julian Prégardien does this with total commitment, great lyrical stretches, and just a brief, intermittent stretch where the intonation softened. Once scene, with him and Donna Anna, features two artist’s mannequins who, as graphically as is within their abstract ability, act out what really happened between her and Giovanni, earlier that night, before the overture. A wink, a nod, and a reminder, as if it was needed, that a point of view, one’s reality, and the truth are not necessarily the same thing. A move, reminiscent of what Kasper Holten’s does in during the overture of his film version of the opera, Juan.

There is probably no production that will be liked by everyone. And a small group in the audience, evidently less impressed by things falling and crashing onto the stage at irregular intervals (still basketballs and a grand piano; the car and the carriage now only dangle and don’t fall, in this updated production), hollered “Boos” at the production team. But those were immediately drowned by contra “Bravos” from an audience that wouldn’t have its good time spoiled.

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Photo descriptions:


Above
Picture No.1: Don Giovanni 2024: Extras of the Salzburg Festival (Pre-Overture)

Picture No.2: Don Giovanni 2024: Anna El-Khashem (Zerlina), Davide Luciano (Don Giovanni)

Picture No.3: Don Giovanni 2024: Julian Prégardien (Don Ottavio), Nadezhda Pavlova (Donna Anna)




Below
Picture No.4: Don Giovanni 2024: Ensemble

Picture No.5: Don Giovanni 2024: Davide Luciano (Don Giovanni), Federica Lombardi (Donna Elvira), Ensemble

Picture No.6: Don Giovanni 2024: Davide Luciano (Don Giovanni)

Picture No.7: Don Giovanni 2024: Davide Luciano (Don Giovanni)

Picture No.8: Don Giovanni 2024: Nadezhda Pavlova (Donna Anna), Ensemble

Teodor Currentzis steps down as Artistic Director of Perm Opera

Teodor Currentzis steps down from Opera position in Perm. In a rambling three-page letter* he cites “a thorough lack of comprehension, utter lack of engagement and sensitivity” on the part of the administration of the city of Perm as the main reason for him leaving “his paradise”. The rest of the letter is a mix of thanking companions, musing on whether he was ever fully understood by anyone and on how governmental agencies by are incapable of understanding anything at all. The information the letter contains – if much – is between the lines, decipherable by insiders. Financial and bureaucratic fetters appear to be shining through as the problems causing this move… which would make sense to sufficiently offend an artist who ostentatiously despises fetters of any kind into resigning.

The Athens-born Currentzis, something of the Jack White among conductors, had been Artistic Director of the Perm State Opera and Ballet Theatre since 2011. This move will presumably not affect Currentzis’ work with his orchestra and chorus, musicAeterna, which he founded in 2004 in Novosibirsk (when he was Music Director of the Novosibirsk State Opera and Orchestra) and which has resided at the Perm opera since 2011. If anything, it was done to focus more on his work with this ensemble. His work as artistic director of Perm’s International Diaghilev Festival, too, will remain unaffected. Not surprising, as this festival will extend to the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris starting in 2021, giving him another foothold in the West. Currentzis is also the Chief Conductor of the SWR Symphony Orchestra Stuttgart, where he just wrapped up his first season.

*So far the most comprehensible version I’ve come across is one translated into German by Natalia Breininger at Andreas Richter Cultural Consulting GmbH: Many thanks! Her source is the letter in the original, as published online by the Perm Opera house.

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Currentzis on ionarts & Forbes.com:

Dip Your Ears, No. 239 / Ionarts CD of the Month (Pathétique Heroin)
Favorite Recordings 2018: Mahler 6 (CDT)
Classical CD Of The Week: Not Everyone Does It Like That – Currentzis’ Così
The Currentzis Dances II & Ravel’s Wonderful Rubbish
Ionarts-at-Large: The Currentzis Dances (MPhil)
Best Recordings of 2011 (#3 – Weinberg/Passenger)

Ionarts-at-Large: The Currentzis Dances

Orchestra-gossip needs to be taken with a grain of salt, or sometimes a satchel. The young conductor Teodor Currentzis, dubbed by the press as “The Miracle of Novosibirsk” after impressive opera performances in Baden-Baden, occasionally meets the verbal equivalent of shrugged shoulders from musicians. But unflattering comments say little about actual outcomes—and especially the Munich Philharmonic exercised in a long field study proving just that: Consistent grumbling about Christian Thielemann was consistently accompanied by the best performances of that orchestra in a decade. Not having heard Currentzis’ last concert in Munich (Schnittke, Ravel, Resphigi, and Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto with Arabella Steinbacher), all I had to go by was the superb impression that he and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra left in Mieczysław Weinberg’s “The Passenger” from Bregenz. (Best of 2011).

J.Adams, The Chairman Dances, Harmonielehre, etc., S.Rattle / CoBSO EMI S.Prokofiev, Symphonies 5 & 7, K.Tennstedt / BRSO PROFIL Hänssler

The concert on Wednesday, February 15^th, also went some way to back that discrepancy of perception up. The Greek founder of Musica Aeterna who headed the Novosibirsk Opera and Ballet Theatre (he is now at the Perm Opera) delivered a very solid program of Adams, Schumann, and Prokofiev. He opened with John Adams’ “The Chairman Dances”—and along with the eponymous Mao danced, in a colorful array of excited windmill-movements—the wiry conductor. All smiles, with long bobbed hair, and India-rubber limbs, Currentzis looks like a master of ceremonies at MIT’s Harry Potter convention. An enthusiastic image, and a slightly ridiculous one. The orchestra, albeit with considerably less enthusiasm, played well through the fragrant-minimalist score, with enough routine and class necessary for it to be a successful curtain raiser.

Originally Adams’s “The Chairman Dances” had been cut from the second of three programs on Thursday, a ‘Young Audience Concert’, but that perplexing decision—John Adams would seem particularly suited for young audiences, better than the Schumann Concerto—had been reversed on short notice. Simplistic and juicy, Adams speaks the vernacular of the modern classical popular; a 1985 Divertimento in mildly oriental foxtrot form.

The Schumann Piano Concerto with soloist Mikhail Mordvinov (replacing Radu Lupu on short notice) was eloquent and charming, performed with some understatement but still enthused and not without slips—with a more impressive first than subsequent movement(s). The encore (Schumann’s Arabeske), well… it was an opportunity for Mordvinov to present himself before such a large audience and he seized it even if the applause didn’t exactly demand it.

Prokofiev Seventh Symphony is a tricky work to bring off well (it’s not very well served on recording, either, except by Järvi / Scottish SO and Tennstedt / BRSO), and that made the performance at hand so impressive: Currentzis handled the feeling and tenderness of the symphony, its quirky sounds, with assurance. Under his hands, the side-by-side of Prokofiev’s children-like naïveté, his veteran assuredness and deft rhythmic handling sounded perfectly organic—and the orchestra went along well enough, especially considering this was the first night of the run. As a little treat, Currentzis played the symphony with both alternate endings: the quiet original first, and then, after a little pause, the few bars of upbeat compromise that Prokofiev grudgingly added.