The return of Don Giovanni at the Teatro Regio in Parma

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It took almost thirty years for the notes of Mozart’s Don Giovanni to resound again in the Teatro Regio in Parma, the temple of Verdi’s indefatigable faith. It is one of the legacies of the general manager Anna Maria Meo, who took her leave after seven years of a management that brought new resources and well-thought-out proposals. The new superintendent Luciano Messi now has the task of putting this legacy to further fruit.

Mario Martone

For the return of Don Giovanni to the Regio, the opening title of the 2023 opera season, the choice went to a well-tested show, without forcing of any kind: the director Mario Martone conceived it more than twenty years ago, in 2002, for the San Carlo in Naples (now taken over by Raffaele di Florio), with the sets and costumes in Baroque style by Sergio Tramonti, the lights by Pasquale Mari, the choreography by Anna Redi.

There is a large wooden staircase that dominates the scene throughout the opera, «something between an Elizabethan theater, a Spanish arena, the benches of a court», as Martone himself recalled, recounting having had a vision of this grandstand during a sleepless night.

Crowded at the beginning, it empties as the characters reach the stage, spectators and protagonists of the show; in the end, only the Commendatore will be enthroned, as he clasps Don Giovanni’s hand in his fatal grip. The solitude of death and punishment. Just as the public experiences the story up close, in this very theatrical reversal of perspectives, thanks to the two side galleries that allow the singers to sing and move up there, in the stalls, in the boathouse boxes. The movement, which with pressing vivacity leaves no respite to attention, is the strong point of the show, as is, after all, the breezy, dynamic acting of the singers.

Among these, the sure and versatile Donna Elvira stands out in the accents of Carmela Remigio and the intense Donna Anna with the voluminous voice of Mariangela Sicilia. Then there are the Zerlina with the graceful sensual musicality of Enkeleda Kamani, the lively Masetto of Fabio Previati, the Don Ottavio of Marco Ciaponi, who makes the character less unbearable than he is thanks to the softness of the accents, the Commendatore with the important voice of James Prestia. And if Leporello obtains liveliness and ease from Riccardo Fassi, in Vito Priante’s Don Giovanni we would have liked more correspondence between the scoundrel’s attitude and the expressiveness of a robust voice.