Given that Francesca Zambello’s staging of Don Giovanni was a visual mess and dramatically inert when first unveiled in 2003, any revival director has their work cut out trying to make sense out of such a dog’s breakfast of a staging. Previous revivals have succeeded or failed on the quality of the cast, and according to all reports this Cast B revival, musically at least, was a marked improvement on Cast A. I’m just glad I wasn’t at the Cast A performance. Although there are some performances to cherish, for the most part this cast mugs and japes its way through Mozart and Da Ponte’s superbly crafted opera that makes a Russ Abbott end-of-the-pier ‘Summertime Special’ look like the RSC.

Barbara Lluch, the revival director, certainly has an uphill struggle, but to throw in the towel from the beginning and let the cast run riot is a sure signal of failure. The whole evening is played for laughs, of the dark undercurrents underlying this work there is not a trace and when the lead decides it’s OK to start playing to the audience and physically interact with a woman sitting close to the stage, you know that there’s a total lack of respect for the work in hand. What possessed Erwin Schrott to do this is beyond me. Perhaps he felt that things needed livening up a bit? It was ghastly. For the most part he sings well, and it isn’t his fault that he has to sing his ‘Champagne Aria’ invisible to vast swathes of the audience, positioned up a flight of steps with his head obscured from view. I mean, what was the thinking behind this?

If the musical performance hadn’t been so dire then maybe the evening wouldn’t have been such an endurance, but conductor Constantinos Carydis is a hectoring, overbearing presence in the pit and the orchestra responds with graceless playing. Either too fast, the overture and opening scene, or mordantly slow, Leporello’s ‘Catalogue Aria’ played as a dirge, this is ‘self-conscious’ conducting of the highest order. I lost count of the times that stage and pit parted company. Last time round the late, great Sir Charles Mackerras shared the conducting with Sir Antonio Pappano. ‘Nuff said.

Next to Schrott, Alex Exposito is a strong vocal presence as Leporello, whilst the most stylish singing of the evening comes from Pavol Breslik’s noble and beautifully articulated Don Ottavio. Ruxandra Donose is generally good as Donna Elvira but like so many mezzos before her, comes a cropper in ‘Mi tradi’. Carmela Remigio has a decent stab at Donna Anna, but her soprano is a couple of grades too small to do proper justice to the role. Matthew Rose is a voluminous Masetto, but alas partnered with a shrill Zerlina (Kate Lindsey).

Kasper Holten’s priority must be a new staging of this enigmatic work, as Zambello’s mise-en-scène is now well past its sell-by date and if truth be told, just plain embarrassing.

- by Keith McDonnell

It’s a rum do when the star turn in Don Giovanni is the sap Don Ottavio, but hats off to the American tenor Matthew Polenzani for injecting urgency and vocal passion into Duncan MacFarland’s otherwise lame revival of Francesca Zambello’s 2002 production. On an evening when character engagement is at a premium, Polenzani brings Italianate fervour to his two big arias and protects Donna Anna with earnest ferocity. The temperature rises a notch whenever he appears.

The stage warms up in other ways, too, when gas-stove flames engulf the hellbound Don Giovanni at the end of the opera. These roaring jets are a high point in the late Maria Björnson’s designs, even if the giant fiery hand that points the roué to the underworld does seem a touch Pythonesque. For the rest, the visual language is a patchwork. There’s a nifty central construction – a bendy, revolving chunk of scenery that comprises a wall of religious iconography, a tenement bedroom and a trompe-l’oeil ballroom – but it’s a pictorial hotch-potch that does little to illuminate the drama. Of greater concern is the massive picture frame that surrounds the stage and puts damaging distance (literal and emotional) between the audience and the action. Allowing an opera of Don Giovanni’s dramatic immediacy to be viewed through the wrong end of a telescope is a fatal flaw.

After a perfunctory, trumpet-heavy account of the Overture, the Greek conductor Constantinos Carydis embarks on a curiously episodic interpretation of this great score. The resultant absence of overriding tension makes for flaccid drama, despite the best efforts of Gerald Finley (burly of voice and torso in the title role and, with his demonic-cherub demeanour, properly persuasive as a ruthless seducer) to put some lead into this Don Giovanni’s pencil.

Lorenzo Regazzo’s vocally underpowered Leporello is no match for his master. The spark is missing. Adam Plachetka fares better as the cuckolded peasant Masetto, not least by remaining true to his character despite the unpleasant sounds produced by Irini Kyriakidou as his intended, Zerlina. With her shrill upper register and her insecure timbre one has to question the recruitment of such an unprepossessing singer to the ranks of the Royal Opera. Perhaps all the home-grown sopranos are busy just now.

As the ultimate wronged woman Donna Elvira should break the heart, but Katarina Karnéus struggles to get near the emotional solar plexus despite the warmth of her mezzo register. Dramatically and emotionally she seemed at sea on opening night, and unfortunately she faded badly towards the end of her great aria, ‘Mi tradi, quell’alma ingrata’. It was left to Hibla Gerzmava to save the day for the distaff side with a finely sung Donna Anna of surprising complexity. Saint or hypocrite? the answer is left delightfully ambiguous.

While her production remains low on psychological insight, Zambello at least flavours the finale with a sweet flourish. Having treated the audience to a three-hour celebration of lust and murder, Mozart and his librettist, Lorenzo da Ponte, feel obliged to bang on about ‘just deserts’ in a dutifully moralising epilogue, ‘Questo è il fin di chi fa mai’. How refreshing, then, to catch a parting glimpse of Finley’s Don as he punctures the posturing with a gleeful cackle, a naked damsel in his arms, happy as a pig in shit amid the ladies of Hades.

- Mark Valencia