Too cool for school

I'm not going to review the Met's new production of Don Giovanni — my column next week will be focused on performances elsewhere in the country. In any case, I wouldn't have much to add to scathing reports by Likely Impossibilities, James Jorden, and Zachary Woolfe. Michael Grandage's staging is, as Zack says, a "nonevent." He gets to the heart of the problem when he quotes a recent Peter Gelb interview to the effect that Grandage deserves praise for his "cool and elegant aplomb." Opera is not a cool and elegant art form. Don Giovanni is not a cool and elegant opera. And, even if it were, to call this production cool and elegant would be to overpraise it greatly. It is just unpardonably dull. Peter Mattei sang beautifully, though, in his last-minute assumption of the role of the Don, and Luca Pisaroni, as Leporello, succeeded in breathing some theatrical life into the proceedings.