By Montague Gammon III
One of the greatest operas of all time, by one of the greatest composers of all time, with a libretto by a similarly regarded writer, opens Virginia Opera’s 50h Anniversary Season with two Harrison Opera House performances October 4 and 6.
The work is full of drama and melodrama and even comedy, and it finally resolves as a great ghost story. The familiar name of the title character, one of Western literature’s original anti-heroes, is now immortalized as shorthand for a serial seducer, or ladies’ man.
In plain-speak, the story might be called “Don Juan gets his comeuppance.” A final comeuppance with, we might say today, “extreme prejudice.” Really, really extreme.
The opera is generally called Don Giovanni, but the originally Italian title translates as The Libertine Punished, or Don Juan.
The composer is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; his collaborator Lorenzo da Ponte.
G.B. Shaw, in his music critic days, wrote that Don Giovanni was an example of why, “in the subtleties of dramatic instrumentation Mozart was the greatest master of them all.”
The wholly self-serving titular character (who today might be called a sociopath) is punished not just because of his disregard for women’s virtue and honor, nor for his repeated deceits, nor even because he is more forceful in his conquests than modern awareness could ever forgive. Confronted by the father of one of his victims, his forcefulness turns deadly and that, very finally, puts him in his place and it’s an unimaginably bad place for an unimaginably long time.
This new production, with a cast of VO veterans, established stars making VO debuts, and early career voices new to the Harrison stage, marks a triumphant homecoming for soprano Symone Harcum.
She’s the former Ruffner Middle School Choral Director who began wowing audiences here pre-pandemic, while impressing veteran directors like Lillian Groag and Kyle Lang. “Her star is rising and I could not be more proud to have known her for all these years from singing in the chorus to singing main stage roles all over the country,” said VO Artistic Director and Don Giovanni conductor Adam Turner.
He’s not alone in praising Harcum. Operatic superstar Denyce Graves mentored her, and the New York Times wrote an article about the two of them last year.
“We’ve been trying to find a vehicle for her to come back and also a window in her schedule and we landed on this production,” Turner added. “She was free [between productions at] the Lyric Opera of Chicago and Opera Philadelphia and Minnesota Opera.” As the pivotal character of Donna Anna, “She’ll be reprising a role that she debuted in Minnesota,” he said.
The entire cast, Turner explained, “has a lot of connection to us as a company.” Jordan Costa, who like Harcum is a graduate of Virginia Opera’s Herndon Foundation Emerging Artists program for up and coming singers, ”is coming to do Don Ottavio and then we have two brand new emerging artists, Chase Sanders and Patrick Wilhelm, in the roles of Zerlina and Masetto and we hope they will be the next Symone and Jordan in some ways.”
Costa’s resume includes some heavy hitting names such as Yale and Eastman schools, along with Glimmerglass, Sarasota, and St. Louis opera companies.
Donna Anna is the first we see of Don Juan’s wronged women, Don Ottavio is her fiancé. Zerlina is a peasant lass upon whom the nobly born, if not nobly behaved, Don Giovanni turns his attentions, and Masetto her betrothed.
Alexandra Loutsion, who was Brünnhilde in Virginia Opera’s recent Die Walküre and Siegfried, returns to sing Donna Elvira, a lady whom Don G. had once abandoned mid-elopement. Another VO Wagner alumnus, Ricardo Lugo, has the role of Donna Anna’s duel-slain dad, the Commendatore. Both have page filling resumes of just about every major opera company in the US. Turner said that singing Mozart as well as Wagner will display “the range of their vocality.”
Voices new to Virginia Opera take on the roles of Don Giovanni and of his manservant Leporello. Ethan Vincent plays the Don; Wm. Clay Thompson plays Leporello. Both have earned Metropolitan Opera credits; “both of them are …exciting fresh talent that we have discovered and wanted to bring to our audiences,” Turner said.
This wholly new production promises a mix of tradition and innovation. Performed in two acts, it’s going back to Don Giovanni’s 1787 Prague world premiere for its words and music while shunning later additions that had once made it “a really long evening,” in Turner’s terms. (Shaw advised much the same in 1891.)
Putting the Virginia Symphony orchestra on stage, “a fresh approach that I learned about from [this production’s stage director] Kyle Lang, who’s a beloved stage director over years with Virginia Opera,” left Turner “mesmerized by the potential,” he said. “I hadn’t really seen us do anything like that, but in some ways I thought breaking that barrier of the orchestra pit and bringing the performers even closer to audiences would be really exciting…and something that really captured the energy and spirit of the opening of our 50th Anniversary Season”
It’s also going to be visually striking and original. “It will be very lighting forward and you might even see a lot of the lighting equipment and haze…we’re going for…essence and spirit …spectacle and energy.”
WANT TO GO?
Don Giovanni
Score by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte
Conducted by Adam Turner
Directed by Kyle Lang
Virginia Opera
7:30 p.m., Fri., Oct. 4
2:30 p.m., Sun., Oct. 6
Edythe C. and Stanley L. Harrison Opera House
160 E. Virginia Beach Blvd., (Llewellyn at VaBeach Blvd.), Norfolk
866-673-7282 (1-866-OPERAVA)
Sung in Italian, English surtitles
(Additional performances in Richmond Oct. 12 & 13)
