‘Don Giovanni’ Review: Ivo van Hove’s Grim Mozart at the Met

The director makes his Metropolitan Opera debut with a bleak, powerful production of the 18th-century classic.

By Heidi Waleson

May 8, 2023 6:03 pm ET

Peter Mattei and Adam Plachetka

 PHOTO: KAREN ALMOND / MET OPERA

New York

This final month of the Metropolitan Opera season features two Mozart production premieres with some high-profile debuts. On Friday, director Ivo van Hove and conductor Nathalie Stutzmann bowed with the first one, a blistering “Don Giovanni.” Directors accustomed to the theater world are often stymied by the demands of opera, but Mr. Van Hove, best known in New York for Broadway productions including the recent dark, video-heavy “West Side Story,” reveled in them, and Ms. Stutzmann, a singer before she turned to conducting (she is currently the music director of the Atlanta Symphony), paced the evening for maximum dramatic effect. (She will also conduct the new “Die Zauberflöte,” directed by Simon McBurney, which opens on May 19.)

Mr. Van Hove’s penchant for grimness was in force. Set and lighting designer Jan Versweyveld built a colorless, unadorned world, the kind of place where Don Giovanni, an amoral user of others, wields his power with impunity. The multilevel set, constructed as if from architectural blocks, was all flat walls around arched windows and simple staircases; the central structure (of three) rotated so slowly between scenes that the slight change in perspective seemed to happen by magic. With its lack of specificity, the set easily served as all of the opera’s many locations, putting the focus on the characters. Modern costumes in neutral colors by An D’Huys—sharp suits for Don Giovanni, Leporello and Don Ottavio; a long black slip dress for Donna Anna; a severe, knee-length gray number for Donna Elvira—also kept the attention on action and subtext.

To that end, Mr. Van Hove’s detailed, intentional directing made the characters and their motivations and interactions leap to the fore. “Don Giovanni” can feel like a string of unconnected solo turns. Here, they formed a narrative—a group of people struggling in different, sometimes conflicting, ways against evil that hides beneath privilege and charm. At the center was Peter Mattei, a handsome, poisonous Don Giovanni, vocally resplendent and offhandedly violent, who shoots the unarmed Commendatore dead and nuzzles Zerlina’s neck with equal, careless suavity. Each scene became another adventure in the effort to stop him, fruitless until fate came calling at the end.

Alexander Tsymbalyuk (on floor), Federica Lombardi and Ben Bliss PHOTO: KAREN ALMOND / MET OPERA

Arias were more than just familiar tunes, and the effect of each on its intended recipient was explicit without upstaging the singer. There was the increasing disgust and pain of Donna Elvira (Ana María Martínez) as she was subjected to the catalog of Don Giovanni’s conquests, performed matter-of-factly by Leporello (Adam Plachetka) with a little black book for documentation. Don Ottavio (Ben Bliss), often a wimpy background figure, became a real person, straightening his fashionably skinny tie and trying to take control of the situation in his “Il mio tesoro” and then sulking as Donna Anna (Federica Lombardi) asserted herself and put off their wedding in “Non mi dir.” For Don Giovanni’s party at the end of Act 1, the onstage musicians and dancers stared at the floor, creating a creepy see-nothing atmosphere that allowed the Don to pursue and assault Zerlina (Ying Fang). (Sara Erde was the choreographer.) Quite a few characters brandished guns at strategic moments. 

Mr. Van Hove’s take on the supernatural conclusion was one of the best solutions I’ve seen to this staging challenge. There’s no statue: The murdered Commendatore (the scarily potent Alexander Tsymbalyuk), who has already appeared in the cemetery, arrives for dinner in his blood-stained shirt; the Don recoils as if electrocuted whenever the Commendatore touches him. The set pieces revolve to show blank walls, and as Giovanni resists his fate video projections (by Christopher Ash) appear. What at first look like abstract squiggles are naked bodies writhing in hell. With the Don dispatched, the final scene in which the remaining characters recite the moral of the tale—the libertine is punished—tops it. The blank walls revolve away to show the windows and staircases we saw earlier, but they are now festooned with curtains and colorful flower boxes and bathed in a warm, golden light. It is a real street, livable now that the dark energy of Don Giovanni is gone. 

A scene from ‘Don Giovanni’ 

PHOTO: KAREN ALMOND / MET OPERA

The singers exuded vocal authority that matched Mr. Van Hove’s directing. Mr. Mattei’s ability to switch from a brutal castigation of Leporello to a honey-tinged serenade showed the layers of Don Giovanni’s malignancy. Mr. Plachetka’s imposing Leporello seemed cornered into complicity. (His costume and demeanor read Mafia hitman.) Ms. Lombardi’s opulent soprano, pouring out Donna Anna’s youthful distress, made a striking contrast with Ms. Martínez’s steelier timbre for Donna Elvira’s despair born of experience. Mr. Bliss’s gorgeous tenor made for an ardent and bossy Don Ottavio; he also incorporated attractive ornaments in the repeats of both his arias. Ms. Fang’s pure soprano and Alfred Walker’s brash bass-baritone and precise diction brought the embattled couple Zerlina and Masetto to life. 

The orchestra sounded unbalanced in the overture and occasionally disjointed later in the evening, but overall, Ms. Stutzmann led a propulsive, dynamically shaded performance. Her crisp tempi allowed no indulgence and Jonathan C. Kelly’s tangy fortepiano accompaniments lent buoyancy to the recitatives; as a result, Mr. Van Hove’s dark interpretation of the piece never felt heavy-handed. Mozart called “Don Giovanni” a dramma giocoso, a hybrid 18th-century form that mixes serious and comic styles, in this case with satirical intent. Ms. Stutzmann ensured that the “giocoso” element bubbled through the musical performance, creating an intriguing, multifaceted portrait of a sexual predator on the loose, and demonstrating how easily he avoids paying the price for his crimes for so long. 

Ms. Waleson writes on opera for the Journal and is the author of “Mad Scenes and Exit Arias: The Death of the New York City Opera and the Future of Opera in America” (Metropolitan).