Merola’s Mozart Not Quite Up To Snuff

Baritone Hyungjin Son as Don Giovanni in his effort to seduce Zerlina (soprano Moriah Berry) in this season’s Merola Opera Program production of Don Giovanni (photograph by Kristen Loken, courtesy of the Merola Opera Program)

Every summer season, the Merola Opera Program presents two full-length performance offerings. The second of these is the Grand Finale, allowing all of the participating artists to present staged excerpts from a wide variety of opera settings. The first takes place during the middle of the season, and it is a fully-staged production of an entire opera. This summer that opera was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 527 Don Giovanni, performed last night in the Concert Hall of the San Francisco Conservatory, with a second performance scheduled for 2 p.m. on Saturday, August 3 (which is apparently sold out). Stefano Sarzani conducted an orchestra of local musicians available for the occasion; and staging was directed by Patricia Racette, who, during her years as an opera soprano, has acquired a keen sense for the relationships that arise between drama and music.

Don Giovanni holds a commanding position in the overall canon of grand opera. This says much for the power of Mozart’s music, since the libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte flies in the face of “contemporary political correctness” at every turn. Racette tended to down-peddle the cringe-inducing aspects of that libretto without trying to bowdlerize them. However, this led to relatively shallow accounts of the personalities behind the libretto text. More often than not, the performers seemed more interested in doing justice to the music than in serving up a narrative that would sustain attention over the course of a three-hour evening. That said, from my “morning after” perspective, very little of what I encountered last night has remained in memory, vivid or otherwise.

Why does this opera recur in repertoire with such reliable frequency? Mozart is up to his usual standards, but there are signs that coping with Lorenzo Da Ponte’s text was more of a challenge than it had been for his K. 492 The Marriage of Figaro. When one considers the cast of characters for K. 527, one is tempted to side with William Shakespeare: “Lord, what fools these mortals be!” Perhaps music lovers look forward to coming back to a performance of K. 527 because they enjoy coming to a performance of K. 527. Go figure it!