Camden New Journal - Classical and Jazz: Don Giovanni

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The Review - MUSIC - classical & jazz with JOEL TAYLOR
Published: 26 April 2007

You have to love this Don

REVIEW: DON GIOVANNI
Upstairs At The Gatehouse
by Jane Wild

LUST, sleaze, revenge, heartbreak; these are just some of the high-wire emotions entwined through Mozart’s Don Giovanni.
Combined with some of opera’s most memorable tunes, the result is a production that’s as relevant to our lives today as it was when it was written more than 200 years ago.
Don Giovanni is history’s legendary lover, here played by a fabulously swaggering Benjamin Seifert, schmoozing from one conquest to another.
Donna Elvira pursues him, furious at his sham marriage proposals, while Donna Anna and her fiancé Don Ottavio are seeking revenge after Giovanni killed Anna’s father in a duel, after a botched go at bedding her.
Giovanni evades them all, not without some comic scrapes, assisted by faithful servant Leporello, but retribution catches up with him by the final curtain.
For anyone new to opera, daunted by the high art of Covent Garden’s Royal Opera House, judging by this show, Hampstead Garden Opera could prove an ideal introduction.
It’s neither high-budget nor slick as they come, but you couldn’t really call this an amateur production, so professional are the performers.
Special mention should be made of Fraser Grant’s inventive and pacey direction, Sarah Blood for her indignantly feisty Elvira, and the 12-piece Dionysus ensemble’s orchestral reduction led by Robin Newton.
Eccentric costumes mixing opulent ballgown with neon futurist punk dispel any last notion of opera as stuffy.
The full house that turned up to see this production certainly knew what they were in for.

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