Adam Palka / Reviews

From the set design to the costumes to the incandescent vocals, The Royal Opera House raises the bar yet again with this performance of Don Giovanni.

You couldn’t ask for a more cultured pair of voices than our master and servant pairing of Erwin Schrott and Gerald Finley: both have burnished, smooth bass-baritone voices and effortless Mozartian phrasing which meant that, in purely musical terms, listening to them was a delight. However, Schrott’s comic timing seemed off in recitative – the little delays while he tries to remember the name of the woman he’s talking to held for slightly too long, an occasional hesitancy rather than confident gusto. In terms of comedy, Finley’s Leporello is something of a work in progress: in his role debut, the alternation of cringing and deviousness didn’t come across as natural. But these are two great singers and the chemistry between them improved through the course of this performance. Let’s hope that it keeps doing so during the run.In contrast, Adela Zaharia’s Donna Anna and Frédéric Antoun’s Don Ottavio looked completely comfortable in their roles from the moment they arrived on stage. Zaharia was the pick of the singers, with ardent delivery, clear intelligibility and a voice that made you sit up and listen. Antoun’s tenor has a slightly covered timbre but he injected plenty of emotion and played a full part in moving the action along. Nicole Chevalier (like Zaharia, a frequent star at Komische Oper Berlin) sang Donna Elvira with masses of character and total confidence throughout her range. I could have hoped for sharper comedy and some more chemistry between characters. But this is an intelligent staging, vocal performances were excellent throughout and the orchestral playing that kept us completely engaged from start to finish. Even with a half-full Covent Garden, it was good to be back.

Richard Jones’ production revived with warmth, elegance and added resonance

Café Momus on Christmas Eve is clearly suffering from a waiter shortage; fewer customers too, plus a shrunken crowd milling outside. Otherwise, there are fewer changes than you might expect in Dan Dooner’s Covid-conscious, socially distanced edition of Richard Jones’s 2017 production of Puccini’s masterpiece. The snow continues to drift from the heavens, and the bohemians’ Paris garret hasn’t got any warmer. More to the point for this story of sudden love, poverty and cruel death, the characters still intermingle, embrace, and, in the case of Musetta, bite. Meanwhile, down in the pit, an orchestra of 74 has been stripped down to 47, armed with Mario Parenti’s reduced orchestration. Yet despite much lighter forces, Puccini remains Puccini.