Two Takes on Don Giovanni

Part I: Capitol Opera's Don Giovanni at Meredith

by Jeffrey Rossman

Sometimes less is more, and the essence of the art will shine through despite reduced forces and frugal extras. Capitol Opera Raleigh presented a splendid production of Mozart's Don Giovanni at Jones Auditorium on the Meredith College campus from June 10-12. I must admit that I tried to squirm my way out of this assignment. I imagined that I'd be sitting through three hours of a half-done rendition with marginally competent singers and a dumbed-down orchestration. I could not have been more wrong. This was a production of the highest professional standards and one of the most enjoyable musical evenings I have experienced in a long time. There was also the added bonus of the translated text displayed above the stage. Fortunately, this feature of live opera is becoming commonplace, even in the most tradition-minded houses. There were some glitches - the titles seemed to stop after the first verse of most arias - but overall they worked well enough to follow the story.

Opera is quite often a great spectacle: beautiful costumes, grand staging and scenery, creative lighting and other effects. But at its core is the music. If this is done well by singers, instrumentalists and conductor and you then throw in some believable acting, the audience will easily forget the lack of scenic frills. This is the situation we had here. Don Giovanni is generally considered one of the "big three" of Mozart's operas ( The Magic Flute and The Marriage of Figaro are the others), and it is a masterpiece.

Conductor and Music Director Al Sturgis used an orchestra of two violins, viola, cello, flute, two oboes, clarinet and bassoon. There was also a harpsichord, used for the recitatives. The thinning down of the string section into a single string quartet configuration is unusual, even for reduced pit orchestras. Two issues arise from this: the totally different sound of one instrument per part vs. even a small section, and the fact that each player must make up in accuracy and projection what might normally be three or four players. The different sound did take some getting used to, but the skill of the quartet was phenomenal. First violinist Pamela Kelly was especially brilliant handling what was the primary instrumental part of the entire opera with extraordinary ease and command. This orchestration retained all the elements of the original score with the added benefit of never even coming close to overpowering the singers - something which is almost always a concern.

I attended the final performance on Saturday evening June 12, and they had already played an earlier matinee. The leads had rotating assignments so I cannot comment on singers who took part in the other performances. In this opera and in general folklore, too, the story of Don Giovanni is a familiar one, so I won't describe the plot. The title character was sung by Jonathan Rohr, an excellent young talent who will be off to the Eastman School of Music for graduate work in the fall. The Don's assistant, Leporello, was played with great comic timing by Henry S. Gibbons, who is becoming well known around here in both operatic roles and as a soloist in choral works. These two characters had a great rapport, and both had excellent, powerful voices. Taquisha Coley Rice, who played Donna Anna, was perhaps the most outstanding member of this excellent ensemble. She has a commanding presence on stage and produces a beautiful clear soprano sound without any operatic wobble.

There were a few scenes where a chorus of twelve singers was on stage. This was the one weak aspect. They were a bit uncoordinated in vocal entrances and cut-offs and in stage movement.

As mentioned before, it was a great joy to be able to hear this work without the singers having to strain to project above a larger orchestra. Maestro Sturgis, unobtrusively and without histrionics, sat on a stool before his ten-member ensemble and gave a masterful example of how quietly to lead all the players. There was not one false entrance, the balance was always perfect, and you heard the singers and orchestra as one instrument.

The scenery was very sparse and generally unchanging, but you barely noticed that. There were a few special lighting effects, especially during the famous Commendatore statue scene. Clearly a lot of work went into designing and sewing; the list of stitchers in the program was substantial.

Music and story are what opera is mainly about. Capitol Opera has shown what you can do with dedicated and talented musicians, even with limited means. The attendance was a little disappointing. Perhaps many people were as hesitant as I incorrectly was. I've repented. This was a great effort and I know the company will continue to get better.

Part II: In the Don's Clutches

by John W. Lambert

Our colleague Jeffrey Rossman was leery, and with some justification, I suppose, but he was, as we used to say in the music fraternity at UNC, "the only man for the job," what with two people down the road in Charleston, three more up the road in Pittsburgh, and the rest of 'em otherwise occupied. I was to have been away, too, so the pressure was on our resident cellist (who played in Duke's Don G orchestra several seasons ago), but as it happened, our own trip didn't happen, so total immersion in Don Giovanni , as rendered by Capitol Opera, became not only possible but desirable. The opera's been done hereabouts, of course, but never before has it been given four times in three days, by two different casts of mostly young, mostly local singers. And as we CVNC ers have noted time and time again, every performance is different. The fledgling Capitol Opera group, which aims to present opera for Triangle residents featuring Triangle singers, managed to set a whole raft of new standards, all by itself. For openers, the rehearsals, while not publicly advertised, were open, allowing media reps, friends of the company and its singers, critics, etc., the chance to experience the forging of an opera - two of them, really, since only one singer was common to both casts. Talk about work! It's clearly a major undertaking to put on an opera once or twice, but to put on two separate casts, even with the same chorus and chamber orchestra, and to achieve any measure of reportable success whatsoever - well, that's really a lot of work. And never mind that, while most of the songbirds were moderately svelte, some of them sort of resembled, well, your stereotypical opera singer, so there was surely additional work for the costumers.... The set and the lighting, by Thomas Mauney, didn't change from cast to cast, but Stage Manager Sarah Stanton had to prep twice as many people as usual. Rossman mentioned the costumes, which clearly required lots of stitching; David Willem Serxner's designs (and his own stitching, and his family's stitching, and the stitching of a flock of other stitchers - some of which stitching was said to have been going on up till half an hour before the first performance) took into account the various (unspecified) social positions of the characters. The garments were simple, and there was no lace or velvet to speak of, but the show looked really good. And as Rossman has noted, the simple sets and the simple lighting worked amazingly well, too, thanks in large measure to the truly splendid singing and playing. It's a funny thing about opera - and dance, too. Sometimes the non-star casts are best, overall, since the ensemble is often so much better. And the absence of "stars" can mean that listeners pay much more attention to the music, rather than waiting for Madame X or Herr Y to blow everyone out of the seats. That's the beauty of Glyndebourne, to cite a world-class venue where lengthy preparations and rehearsals lead to astonishingly unified presentations. Although the schedule for Capitol's Don G was insanely tight, and the orchestra was not brought in till very late in the game, the quality of the preparations was clearly very, very high. If truth were told, it's likely that sheer determination on the parts of all the participants made it work; if so, then there was a lot riding on it, and it was a big gamble, but it paid off handsomely.

In the "other" cast, which is to say, the cast heard on opening night, the Leporello was Brian Lowry, a true bass, and Don Giovanni was James J. Rollins. (Lowry has sung in several other COR productions; Rollins has more wide-ranging experience.) In many performances of this opera, it's hard to tell those two folks apart, but in the performance under discussion, the roles were clearly delineated, vocally. Donna Anna and Don Ottavio were sung by Courtney L. Durham and William Chamberlain, respectively, singers who have graced area stages for some time. (She was OCNC's Turandot understudy, and he was Pong in that company's recent production of the Puccini opera.) They too made a fine and finely-matched pair, vocally. Kimberly Wagner and Gregory Geiger were Zerlina and Masetto; they are young but both hold promise, and she soared with particular effectiveness. Kimberley Bentley was Donna Elvira, and she made the most of her part, which occupies middle ground, dramatically, between the aristocratic Anna and the peasant maid Zerlina. (Bentley's credits include the premiere of J. Mark Scearce's Kitty Hawk .) The distinguished veteran singer Don Johnston was the highly effective Commendatore in both casts.

For the record, the artists in the other cast not already named in the preceding commentary were William Trice (Ottavio), Cecily Anne Boyd (Elvira), Colene Birchfield (Zerlina), and Jordan Wilson (Masetto). I didn't hear either of the public performances involving these artists, but their work during the dress rehearsal was strong. Rice and Trice (I am not making this up!) were an impressive "power" couple whose large voices filled the hall; Boyd brought elegance and grace to her role; and opera debutantes Birchfield and Wilson did amazingly well, too.

Al Sturgis (whose name is often given as Alfred E. Sturgis) is MD of the NC Master Chorale and the Tar River Philharmonic and Principal Conductor of the Carolina Ballet, when that company uses an orchestra. He's a strong choral person whose skills and abilities have grown considerably since he took up leading orchestras, too. His work on this occasion - on June 10 and during the dress rehearsals - was impressive. The band struggled a bit in the first run-throughs but, like the singers, they came together by the first curtain. Concertmaster Kelly was, as noted above, a strong presence; so, also, was Jonathan Kramer, NCSU's cellist, who took up the mandolin, too, and harpsichordist (and rehearsal accompanist) Janis Dupre. As Rossman has noted, the chamber group was effective, after the somewhat abbreviated Overture, and at no point did they overwhelm the vocalists. The Overture wasn't the only number that was truncated; there were some other minor trimmings here and there. One of the cuts was large and disfiguring - it was in the opera's sublime finale - but one can understand why it was done..., and only those who know the opera well (or who were following scores) would have noticed it.

Let the record show that there was not a microphone or amplifier or loudspeaker anywhere in the hall at any point. That alone set this run apart from most other regional attempts at opera. The substantial crowd on hand for opening night carried on like many opera audiences do, and with sincere appreciation. COR General Director Joel Adams and his staff and the board of COR have much to celebrate - and much to do, before the company resumes work next fall. Meanwhile, bravo!