The lavish booklet for René Jacobs' new recording of Don Giovanni contains an extended interview with the conductor in which he explains his aim to clean away the accumulated interpretative grime that has deposited itself around Mozart's dramma giocoso, to remove the nineteenth century's 'overpainting' which obscures our view of the genuine work. It strikes me, though, that he's been a bit overzealous with his solvents and scrapers in this restoration job; in his attempt to emphasise the giocoso of Mozart's notoriously ambiguous designation, he all but removes the drama which remains essential to any convincing performance of this opera.
Jacobs seems to identify the great final dinner scene, with the arrival of the Commendatore to drag Don Giovanni down to hell, as the worst-affected victim of the nineteenth century's desire to see the opera as a tragedy (he refers to it as 'tragic' with scornful inverted commas) and with his fast tempo and deliberately understated acting, this approach means that the scene also fails to register dramatically. I fully understand many of Jacobs' remarks in his interview but I think that, whatever one argues, Mozart's conception of this scene was dramatic. His music is here unprecedented in its theatricality and it just seems to me perverse to try deliberately to undermine this, even if it's all done in the name of authenticity.
In fact, the balance between being historically informed and actually producing an effective performance of the work seems wrong throughout. Common sense has been overtaken by a desire to experiment just for the sake of it. This leads to a fussy and sometimes infuriating performance. After what's a wonderfully alert and dramatic performance of the Overture, for example, the first ensemble starts off surprisingly slowly at Leporello's 'Notte e giorno faticar' only to jolt up a gear a few bars later at 'E non voglio più server'. I can only imagine that this is to contrast the dreariness of Leporello's working day and night with his determination to leave the Don's employ. However, this is all written into Mozart's score and the overemphasis serves no purpose. Throughout Jacobs pulls the tempo around unnecessarily within numbers, in 'Ho capito' he almost grinds to a halt, both times, at 'Facio il nostro cavaliere'. The Act I finale likewise loses all sense of continuity with its constant changes of pulse, you can almost feel the seat-belt digging in as Jacobs slams the breaks on going into 'Tutto tutto gìa si sa', so jarring is the effect.
Another symptom of this desire to emphasise the comic and giocoso is heard in the preening and over-inflated continuo. I'm all for recitatives being livened up by a bit of humour from the harpsichordist or, as in this case, fortepianist, but here things get out of hand and Giorgio Paronuzzi sounds like he's just showing off. It actually serves to the detriment of the work when he plays a long introduction to the grave-yard scene and so many of his other humorous effects are, to borrow Jacobs' painting metaphor, not much funnier or sophisticated than drawing a moustache on the Mona Lisa. He can't help but pre-empt the mandolin's theme before the Serenade and some of the cheap horror effects he and his 'cellist strive for misfire horribly.
Rumour has it that Simon Keenlyside was Jacobs' first choice as the Don and he would no doubt have brought more charisma to the title role than Johannes Weisser. Jacobs justifies his casting of Weisser, who is still in his twenties, by pointing to the historic precedent set by Luigi Bassi, Mozart's Prague Don, who was only twenty-one. However, despite having a perfectly pleasant voice, Weisser does not entirely convince in either the buffo episodes or (probably no thanks to Jacobs) in the dramatic moments. His Leporello, Lorenzo Ragazzo makes a decent stab at bringing some genuine humour to proceedings but seems to have seized up slightly under Jacobs' direction. It says something that Kenneth Tarver as Don Ottavio is probably the most convincing of the men - his Dalla sua pace is thankfully left to its own devices in a beautifully sung and unaffected rendition.
Alessandro Guerzoni's Commendatore is woolly and unimposing, more a rustic buffo than figure of authority – his death scene underplayed and under-sung. Of the women, perhaps Alexandrina Pendatchanska's Donna Elvira is the most convincing. But there seems to be a constant tension between her tendency to sing out and be lyrical and Jacobs' forward drive in the arias themselves, although surprisingly she is forced to linger melodramatically in the unexpectedly slow reading of the accompanied recitative before 'Mi Tradi'. Olga Pasichnyk's Donna Anna often hovers dangerously close to being flat and is reluctant to give the role any dramatic dimension beyond the conventional gestures. Jacobs is once again quick to cite historic precedent in this case and although he might be right that the tendency to cast dramatic sopranos in this role has distorted it, there is a difference between not casting a dramatic soprano and telling one's soprano not to be dramatic. Sunhae Im's Zerlina is bright-eyed and nicely sung, although she doesn't seem quite at home with the ornamentation that's expected from her.
Putting aside musicological considerations, the litmus test for a Don Giovanni performance comes in the final dinner scene, correctly identified as pivotal by Jacobs. In this recording the sound of the statue's knocks on the door give us a hint of what to expect. These timid taps are most emphatically not the poundings of a dead father returning in marmoreal guise to drag his murderer down to hell. This is indicative of the great flaw in this performance: rather than simply seeking to underplay the drama, it seems perversely to set out to undermine it. This scene fails to raise the hairs on the back of the neck and falls flat.
Jacobs is right to perform one of the two distinct versions overseen by Mozart rather than the usual composite, with its 'traffic jam' of arias in the second act. He plumps for the Viennese version ('Il mio Tesoro' and Leporello's 'Ah pieta, signori miei' from the Prague version are added as appendices) and this helps to keep the action moving. Incidentally, the academic pretensions of the accompanying booklet - complete with footnotes and bibliography - are undermined significantly for English speakers by the poor translation of the libretto. This reads as though it might have been based on a singing translation and so often distorts or just changes the meaning unnecessarily. The final lines of the whole opera, 'E de' perfidi la morte / Alla vita è sempre ugual', for example are translated inexplicably as 'all those who live by malicious deeds/shall always have their lives extinguished.'
Some of the virtues that made Jacobs' Figaro in particular such a success – the orchestra's astonishing virtuosity, the detail of the recorded sound – are still there and I'm sure for many this recording will still be self-recommending. It is the fact that all these virtues are used in the service of what in my view is a fundamentally flawed conception of this great work that makes it all the more frustrating. The zealousness with which Jacobs pursues this ideal even makes it difficult to recommend this version for the quality of its playing; spontaneity has turned to idiosyncrasy, lightness and humour have turned to overemphasis and didacticism, drama has been replaced with dry academicism.
Jacobs no doubt raises some very interesting questions about this opera which he rightly describes as 'the least known of the Da Ponte operas, even though it's the most frequently performed.' Yet when he says 'we much prefer the risk of displeasing the public to betraying the work' he's on shaky ground. The public are not actually that unsophisticated when they latch onto the drama of Mozart's score - admittedly sometimes overplayed - and to deny totally that element of the opera is, in my view, a more significant betrayal.
By Hugo Shirley