Don't miss any news! Aria from the Catalog of Horrors of Don Giovanni del Teatro Real

Aria from the Catalog of Horrors of Don Giovanni del Teatro Real

First of all, I would like to warn you that this aria is not new here. I left it exposed on top of the intercity bus schedules and routes poster at the Pinar de Las Rozas stop in Madrid, the night I returned from seeing the performance of Don Giovanni on December 23 at the Teatro Real, plagiarizing a wonderful idea of ​​“ Leporello” by Claus Guth, who on the stage of the Real places the catalog “delle belle che amò il padron mio” in a place similar to a rustic village bus stop, surely from the province of Burgos, in which she waits patiently, seated, cardboard suitcase in hand, a vulgar, sad and provincial Doña Elvira.

But even before this warning, I should have put on record that I became convinced that night that to say that Mozart-Da Ponte's Don Giovanni is immortal is not hyperbolic. It is astonishing how the mythical figure of Don Juan came out alive from the treacherous, persistent and premeditated attempt to dismember him carried out by the regisseur Claus Guth, in addition to cruelty, with a generous display of terrible bad taste.

I don't remember exactly how the aria from the catalog of horrors began, which I hope will continue to be exhibited at the mentioned bus stop, to the derision of this imitator, mutatis mutandis, of Jack the Ripper. But it's the same. For some stanza we will have to start now.

Perhaps for one of those that show the absolute contempt of this capricious provocative stage director. It is well known that Don Giovanni is caught trying to seduce "Donna Anna" by his father the "Comendador". Consequently, both duel with swords, as befits people of his lineage. Mozart, who, as is commonly said, did not stitch without a thread, describes, with sonorous musical onomatopoeias, the clash of steels and the thrusts of combat until "Don Giovanni" launches his accurate fatal thrust, at which point there is a climax orchestral.

Without any justification other than for the pleasure of teasing unnoticed spectators, the fight takes place with a pistol in the hand of the "Comendador" and a club, which seems to be taken from the famous Goya painting, wielded by "Don Giovanni ” and with which he treacherously hits the Commander's head causing his death. But there are a couple of unexpected details that top off this horror. On the one hand, before dying, the "Comendador" wounds the perfidious gentleman who was trying to rape his daughter in the stomach with a bullet from his pistol, while "Don Ottavio", who was walking by, hearing that the "Comendador ” calls for help, pretends to take his mobile phone and with very ostentatious gestures, he seems to be trying to make an emergency call to the police or a mobile ICU, who knows!

The focus of Herr Guth's snafu is clear from the beginning: it is about narrating the last hours of the libertine gallant of fine stamp (in this staging, a disheveled thug), after being mortally wounded by his rival in such an unequal duel, it seems that the stage director is in a hurry to remind the audience that the main title of the opera is “il dissoluto punito”, being “Don Giovanni” a determining and explanatory “ossia”, for which he decides to punish him from the start. principle, perhaps due to his Germanic and fatalistic Lutheran-Weltanschauung of eternal damnation and inspired by the religious-fanatical character that Zorrilla gave him.

To show viewers that the play is a tragic agony of a freeloader, all scenes take place in a huge, dark forest of Nordic conifers growing on rocky, rugged terrain that they have to walk through, juggling to avoid falling, the three female protagonists, now in high-heeled shoes, now barefoot and with hesitant steps so as not to injure their feet with stones and splinters from the trees of the forest that cover the entire floor of the stage. A real cruelty to the poor sopranos, for no reason.

We continue with another stanza of this aria taken at random. One of the most famous moments of this opera and of all Italian melodrama is the so-called Champagne aria, although as is known, Don Giovanni thinks of the “paese wine” and not of the exclusive and aristocratic French sparkling wine. Be that as it may, it is a tradition that was never lacking, according to TW Adorno, in a classic staging of this opera in Germany and France during the 19th and 20th centuries. Including the final breaking of the glass crashing it against the ground with a loud laugh. It is true that many of the modernizing regists, who are in full fashion today, despise this ritual and strip that great moment of the meaning of the vital clamor of a refined bon vivant.

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That criterion can be accepted. But with a warning, because in this way a brief and amazing moment is lost, which is a summit of the great lyrical repertoire of European high culture. Rarely has the combination of a brilliant composer, Mozart, an enlightened librettist, Da Ponte, and an accurate interpretive tradition given the viewer the perfect link between the Apollonian and the Dionysian, which is at the root of the Spanish myth of the Don Juan, one of the most illustrious symbols of the sexual courtship of humanity.

But in the case of Claus Guth, not only must we lament the loss of this paradigmatic staging of incalculable artistic value and truth, but we must also condemn the derision, the mockery he makes of it by replacing the glass of champagne with a red can of soda whose content is spread over his head, with tacky gestures, a shabby and vulgar actor at the end of his aria.

In line with this boorishness is the last supper of a dying and lifeless rake that is parodied with a night picnic at the foot of a huge, dark trunk of one of the trees in the gloomy forest. The sumptuous banquet, consisting of packaged junk food, is removed with buffoonish “Leporello” gestures from a plastic supermarket bag. And the wine, a marzemino, is transmuted back into a canned soft drink.

For personal reasons, I was extremely outraged by this wine sneer. The story of my rage, told in scholarly overtones with the reader's permission, is as follows. On the occasion of the superb and already mythical production of the long-awaited Giorgio Strehler of Don Giovanni at the Teatro alla Scala with which the 1987/1988 season was inaugurated on December 7, 1987, with musical direction by Riccardo Muti, a group of scaligere friends were the the day before on a pilgrimage in homage to Mozart and Da Ponte al Trentino to buy some bottles of marzemino, a wine that is hard to find outside that region. It is a dense, very dark and slightly fruity wine, little known today but which was fashionable in the courtly and aristocratic circles of Vienna in the years in which this opera was composed. This detail has always been considered an example of the refinement, illustration, high culture and hedonism of the poet, who knew the most select wines of his day. Only a stage director who feels hatred and contempt for this opera can come up with this horror of bad taste and ignorance of the history of the lyric.

The previous scene, the one that takes place in the cemetery, is an insult to the viewer who knows, even superficially, this jewel of the Mozart-Da Ponte trilogy. Herr Guth must have thought that the best visual metaphor for a churchyard in the ubiquitous and oppressive forest setting was a clearing appearing amid truncated trees, one of whose split trunks represents the marble statue of the “Comendador”. In truth, it was one of the moments in which the parody invited laughter.

Another question that totally escapes me. Why this fashion of making the whole plot take place in the same stage space, when the great opera houses, as is the case of the Teatro Real (and let's not say La Scala) have modern stage machinery that allows practically any change of scene without interruption? If you think that Don Giovanni has nine paintings with very different locations and sets, and that it was composed for a small stage with a very rudimentary stage, such as that of the Prague State Theater (known during the communist era as the Tyll Theatre) , Can you imagine Da Ponte's overflow of fantasy and scenic richness if he had then had a modern stage like that of the Teatro Real? It is undoubtedly an incomprehensible waste of resources of modern and precise theatrical mechanics.

The Catalog of Horrors aria in this production by Herr Claus Guth has even more verses. But I'm not going to put them all here, not even those that due to their horror would deserve a da capo. Just a few details of the pagliacescca aria, such as the gymnastic dance with arms raised that can be glimpsed at the back of the stage while the Minuet of Don Juan plays; the recumbent smokes of joints of the guests at the "Don Giovani" party or the obscene simulations of sexual acts in the middle of the forest, come to mind or not.

On the other hand, Don Giovanni is a jewel with so many and so rich facets that even a lout can get it right in a couple of scenes, like the one of “Zerlina” in a white wedding dress swinging on a swing, clearly inspired by the iconic painting by Fragonard.

Reflecting critically on this harsh diatribe of mine against the production of the Teatro Real, I have remembered the advice of a well-known critic of a prestigious national newspaper. The expert advises that before seeing the show, it is convenient to read two brief articles included in the hand program. One bears the signature of Joan Matabosch, Artistic Director of the Teatro Real, and focuses on the specific proposal of the German regista; the other presents a vision of the myth of Don Juan from a well-known literary critic with whom I have once shared the pages of Book Magazine. As much as I have tried to find a path that would take me from these writings to what I witnessed on stage at the Real, especially in the case of the writer Daniel Ibáñez (who presents a completely different approach than that used by Claus Guth), I have been unable to find her. Perhaps it is my limited capacity for understanding, especially in the case of Mr. Matabosch's brief note, of which I have not understood anything. But I have for myself that it is possible that if I have not understood anything it is because there is nothing to understand. Fernando Peregrin Gutierrez