Overall, however, the concept works better than one might expect, largely through Harnoncourt’s meticulous attention to textual meaning. Inevitably, even on this cleverly-filmed recording, the dramatic power of the piece suffers at times, as singers face the audience, the death of the Commandatore is signalled by the wave of a bloody glove, or Maite Beaumont’s Donna Elvira turns the pages of the score as she sings. The conductor may be play-acting to some extent when he exclaims before soloists and orchestra, "there’s no-one else here who knows anything about music," but it requires a generous amount of chutzpah not to present the work fully-staged as intended by composer and librettist, to forego the services of a director and to raise the position of his Concentus Musicus players so as to partly obscure the view of the stage from the front stalls. "In the eyes of the audience, he is in some ways a hero," he continues, so in the opera’s famous catalogue aria, Ruben Drole’s Leporello accordingly smooches Ma, in Italia in awed admiration, as if recollecting the taste of the sweetest wine. "All the women he has seduced love him back," he says of Giovanni-which would raise more than an eyebrow of Donna Anna and his other rape victims.
In it, Harnoncourt comes across on the one had as an engaging, intense, Gargoyle-like sage with profound and original insight into the music, but on the other can seem arrogant and misogynistic. His reasoning, for what would be his last words on these masterpieces, is set out in the accompanying booklet and more particularly in a fascinating 52-minute behind-the-scenes documentary that is the most interesting part of the DVD package, even if one does not accept all the 84-year-old’s propositions. This is one of the three Da Ponte / Mozart operas that Nikolaus Harnoncourt presented in concert format in 2014, the year before his retirement.
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART DON GIOVANNI FULL
After so many brave but ultimately unsatisfactory concert performances of operas due to the COVID crisis, it is a surprise to come across one where the company has simply chosen to forego a full staging.