Arizona Opera ends season in Tucson with laugh-filled 'Don Giovanni'

You see a movie you haven’t seen in years, and there’s that one scene that brings on the “Oh, I remember now!” epiphany.

We had that at Linda Rondstadt Music Hall on Saturday, April 27, when Arizona Opera closed out its 2023-24 season with Mozart’s dark yet remarkably funny “Don Giovanni.”

To be fair, it’s been nearly 10 years since Arizona Opera’s last “Don Giovanni,” and a whole lot has happened in that ensuing decade that has kept us fairly distracted.

But it quickly came back to us from that first thundering timpani that opened the floodgates for all sorts of toe-tapping musical wonderful in Conductor Daniela Candillari’s performance of the Overture.

Suddenly, it was like being reunited with an old friend.

“Don Giovanni” was the perfect nightcap to a season that introduced us to a manmade monster (“Frankenstein”), reunited us with a twisted barber (“The Barber of Seville”) and reminded us how young love can be tragically blinding (“Romeo & Juliette”).

For more than three hours Saturday night, we got to laugh.

In “Don Giovanni,” Mozart created a truly wicked man in Giovanni (bass-baritone Richard Ollarsaba), a womanizer who kills the father of one of his unwilling conquests, then rushes off with his fairly disgusted servant Leporello (baritone Zachery Nelson) to find another victim to add to his little black book. He’s so despicable he tries to lure the young bride Zerlina (soprano Vanessa Becerra) from her groom Masetto (bass-baritone Peter Barber) on their wedding night.

His ex Donna Elvira (soprano Toni Marie Palmertree) is stalking him while the grieving daughter Donna Anna (soprano Vanessa Vasquez) and her fiancé Don Ottavio (tenor Brad Brickhardt) are seeking revenge for the murder of her father, Commendatore (bass Adam Lau).

But like Mozart’s "Marriage of Figaro," this is an opera buffa. That means the Don Juan-like character is over-the-top repulsive; Elvira is bitter and scorned, yet still madly devoted to the man causing her bitterness; and Leporello is the comic relief, the everyman who slogs about doing what he’s told but grumbling at every turn.

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Credit Stage Director Tara Faircloth for emphasizing that humor, from the hilarious scene where Elvira tears pedals off a rose, gently at first then with crushing fury, to Leporello dressed in Giovanni’s clothes and trying to hide his true identity when Elvira mistakes him for her scorned lover.

Interesting to note, Faircloth was the director the last time Arizona Opera mounted this opera in 2016.

Here are some other highlights of Saturday’s performance:

There wasn’t a single weak link in the cast, from the wonderful chorus to the powerfully-voiced and very funny Ollarsaba, a Tempe native making his hometown opera debut.

Nelson’s rich baritone was matched by his delicious comedic timing.

Palmertree’s soprano soared at every turn and her comic acting prompted true belly laughs from the audience.

Brickhardt, a sublime tenor and member of Arizona Opera’s studio artist program, played the lovesick sap to Vasquez’s emotional trainwreck of grief punctuated by her terrific soaring soprano.

The orchestra under Candillari, conducting her first “Don Giovanni,” reminded us why we love this opera. Candillari brought out the dynamic and powerful textures of the music, from the light-hearted romps when Giovanni and Leporello were bickering over his womanizing to the shuddering fear of God when Commendatore’s ghost delivers Giovanni’s ultimate fate.

The high-tech video wall that Arizona Opera has been using in most of its productions of late seamlessly took us to Don Giovanni’s lavish palace, the town square and the garden beneath Donna Elvira’s balcony. It also provided the bloodless bloody scene when Giovanni killed Commendatore.

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