The city, which badly treated Mozart during his lifetime, proudly promotes and makes a lot of money of its most famous son. Why the hell, do they continue to mishandle him posthumously?
This year’s Salzburg Festival main new opera production was Don Giovanni. On one hand, it promised Romeo Castellucci, who directed a wonderful production of Salome, two years ago. On the other hand, the festival managers chose the ridiculous Greco-Russian swan, Teodor Currentzis, as conductor. This should have sufficed to put me off. Indeed, I long hesitated before going. I did go and have only myself to blame.
Currentzis has made a habit of co-opting external pieces of music and inserting them into existing compositions. Spoiling other composers’ productions must be the limit of his creativity. A few years ago, he did it with Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito. He did it again with this year’s Don Giovanni.
The soloists, chosen by Currentzis for Don Giovanni were a mixed bunch. Michael Spyres was a wonderful Don Ottavio and Federica Lombardi a very good Donna Elvira. Davide Luciano in the title role and Vito Priante as Leporello are names to be forgotten.
But even mediocre soloists get enthusiastic applause from the easy-to-please Salzburg Festival audience. Their applause gets especially jubilant after popular arias, which even the musically uneducated recognise.
Currentzis has successfully marketed himself and enjoys loads of groupies, such as the woman, who sat behind me, who had never seen or heard Don Giovanni before. She travelled especially from Hamburg only because of “wonderful” Currentzis. He is an “in” conductor, a crowd-puller and the opera houses, in all likelihood, will continue to court and fête him. If it were up to me, I would send him back to Siberia, where he started his career.
No comments:
Post a Comment