GENOA

Mozart: DON GIOVANNI

Italy's economic crisis has forced opera houses here to cut down drastically on expenditures. The Teatro Carlo Felice opened the season on December 9 with La Scala's 1987 Strehler-Frigerio Don Giovanni. The production remains stunning and undeniably functional, though the characters are somewhat dwarfed by its massive architecture, and the oblique lighting regularly obscures facial expressions. Certain details, such as the constant cloak-twirling, now appear over-fussy, and others are unmotivated (Giovanni throws a cutlet at Elvira when he invites her to join him at dinner in the last act).

These details hardly reduced the impact of some outstanding individual performances. Cecilia Gasdia, in her role debut as Anna, inflected the text masterfully and sang with compelling musicianship. For the first time in this reviewer's experience, "Non mi dir" emerged as part of an intimate conversational exchange. Alessandro Corbelli's Leporello was more familiar, though hardly less remarkable. Like Gasdia, he does not possess an exceptional instrument but brilliantly combines variety of verbal nuance with exemplary vocal line.

Ferruccio Furlanetto performed the title role with ease and swagger, though his manner, timbre and diction were less than ideally aristocratic. His strong bass, combined with that of Alfredo Zanazzo (a superb Commendatore), sounded to thrilling effect in the finale. Alida Ferrarini (Zerlina), Pietro Spagnoli (Masetto), Sheri Greenawald (Elvira) and Laurence Dale (Ottavio) completed the fine cast, the Italians having an edge over the others in verbal eloquence. Conductor Yoram David adopted a more relaxed approach than Muti, who is closely associated with this production. As a result the action seemed to flow more naturally, though the performance was much less stimulating in detail.

- STEPHEN HASTINGS