Don Giovanni – Review of 2025 Aix-En-Provence Festival Production

The Aix-en-Provence Festival is in full swing for its 77th season from July 4 to 21, 2025 in a picture-perfect medieval city. Its eclectic program of operas includes Don, Giovanni, an adaptation of Bemjamin Britten’s Billy Budd as The Story of Billy Budd, Sailor, Cavalli’s La Calisto, The Nine Jeweled Thief, a new work by Siva Eldar and Ganavya Doraiswamy and Louise.
Don Giovanni is the big, classical opera of the season and it is conducted by the inimitable Simon Rattle with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. The production is directed by Robert Icke, a brilliant theatre director who is making his debut as a director of opera.
Like all directors, Icke wants to put his own imprimatur on the production, and he does that in spades. There is a wide range of changes, tweaks, adaptations that a director can do even with a work as well known as Don Giovanni. He can dramaturge the libretto and change the era, add or delete characters and change the spirit of the work almost beyond description.
Ickes does all those things, and he adds so many twists that I could hardly keep up with a very familiar libretto. Don Giovanni opens with the dramatic overture, but Icke adds stage action during the playing of it. We see projected on a screen an old man in a room with a chair, table and some stereo equipment. He is trying with difficulty to get some music to play on his system. After a few minutes of trying, he succeeds in getting the overture to Don Giovanni to play. He falls on the ground and we get a closeup of him. He is apparently dead. I assume the old man is Don Giavanni but, by the end of the performance I think it could be the Commendatore. We saw the Commendatore killed in the first scene, but he walked off the stage instead of being carried out. We are used to seeing the Commendatore’s statue thundering in the final scene but according to Icke he makes several appearances during the performance.
My initial complaint to seeing the Commendatore, if it was him, was that I paid attention to the scene instead of listening to the great overture. The situation became worse when I could not figure out who is who as between Don Givanni and the Commendatore. And that is just the beginning of Icke’s tinkering more accurately bludgeoning Mozart’s and Da Ponte’s work.
Before outlining some other aspects of Icke’s approach, I want to give credit to the performers. I start with the women who excelled in their singing and acting. I start with Golda Schultz as Donna Anna. She is the tricky one who pretends to grieve for her father and is supposed to be engaged to and in love with Don Ottavio, but in fact is in love with Don Giovanni. Gorgeous voice and able to manipulate all situations, Schultz gives a bravura performance.
We note that Donna Anna comes out of her room in the opening scene where she was perhaps raped or at least molested, wearing a gray dress with no evidence of interference. She approaches Don Giovanni lovingly. We get her number.
Kudos to mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kozena as Donna Elvira. Don Giovanni seduced her and abandoned her and now she wants to find him and tear his heart out unless he comes back. (a slight qualification there). Kozena captures the pain, anger and longing of Donna Elvira as she belts out her complex arias. She expresses her anger as she is searching for Don Giovanni on the street and he “smells” a woman. According to Icke, she is in her bedroom. Sure.
Zerlina (soprano Madison Nonoa) is the pretty peasant girl on her wedding day Zerlina is lovely of voice and face (but not too bright) and she almost falls for Don Giovanni. I think Icke takes her a step further and she kisses him. She knows how to manipulate her nice Masetto (bass Pawel Horodyski) even after he gets a thrashing. Masetto is a peasant, but Icke makes no point of that,
Baritone Andre Schuen as Don Giovanni and bass Krzysztof Baczyk as Leporello make a fine pair of vocal scoundrels, but I am not sure what Icke has in mind about the first. I may well have missed Icke’s point about Don Giovanni but as I said I was following so many confusing strands, his message escaped me. I am still trying to figure out how he got into hospital and ended up running around with a pole for intravenous medication.
Aside from Masetto, the other nice guy is Don Ottavio (tenor Amitai Pati) who is engaged to Donna Anna. Ottavio gets some beautiful arias expressing ardent love and Pati does a superbly expressive job.
In some scenes videos are projected in the top half of the stage and the bottom looks like a basement. There is frequent use of projections, and it is not always clear what they mean. At one point Leporello leads Donna Elvira from her upper storey apartment and Don Giovanni serenades her maid. Her maid looks like a 10-year-old girl whom we see several times. Is Don Giovanni asking her to dispel his sorrows, and compliments her lips as sweeter than honey and more? The word for this is paedophilia but is that what Icke is getting at? Icke has surpassed all bounds and has gone on an ego trip that has nothing to do with sound directing.
Simon Rattle with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra play Mozart brilliantly despite the confusion on stage and the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir handles the choral parts superbly. Don Giovanni is probably indestructible but there are times when Robert Ickes makes you wonder.
Don Giovanni by W.A. Mozart opened on July 4 and will be performed eight times until July 18, 2025, at the Grand Théâtre de Provence, Aix-en-Provence, France. www.festival-aix.com/

Andrè Schuen , Golda Schultz , Amitai Pat Photo © Monika Ritterhaus

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