When it comes to Mozartian perfection on the opera stage, one needn’t always seek it in Milan, Vienna, Salzburg or New York! At the Sferisterio Opera Festival in the central Italian city of Macerata, a rapt audience was treated to a production of Don Giovanni ‘that will enter the annals of opera’ (ForumOpera.com).
This magnificent reading of Mozart’s timeless masterpiece sweeps the viewer into a libertine, 18th-century society dominated by sensuality and erotic impulses. They are acted out on the stage’s main prop, a large, unmade bed, not only by Don Giovanni, but also by just about everyone else in the ‘nearly faultless cast’ (ForumOpera.com). In his role debut as the title hero, Ildebrando D’Arcangelo is ‘incandescent’ (Gazzetta die Parma) and ‘doesn’t do Don Giovanni; he is the Don. Unsurpassable’ (24 Ore).