Arts Alive San Antonio

By JASMINA WELLINGHOFF, Editor

Rising-star opera singer, Craig Verm, says he enjoys portraying the bad guys. This week, Opera San Antonio will give him a great opportunity to do just that since he’s portraying the title role in OSA’s production of Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni at the Tobin Center for the Performing arts.

 Better known as Don Juan, the title character is a serial seducer of women who “loves them and leaves them” with insouciance and total disregard for the damage he causes along the way. There’s a passage in the opera where his servant, Leporello, explains his masters’ history of conquests to one of the Don’s victims. “In Italy (he seduced) 640; In Germany 231, a hundred in France, in Turkey 91 and in Spain 1003 – peasant girls, maidservants, city girls, countesses and baronesses.”

“I certainly don’t like the character of Don Giovanni,” said Verm, who has performed the role several times before with other opera companies. “But I think it’s important to tell stories that are relatable. Don Giovanni is still part of our culture today; he’s a person we can recognize as a predator, someone who is hungry for power, full of lust and greed and rage. Fortunately, in this opera, he pays for it. Evil does not triumph; there’s justice. So, it’s a good story to tell.”

The opera is also a great vehicle for soaring music and gorgeous arias. “It’s a joy to sing,” said Verm, a baritone. “I’ve been singing Mozart’s roles for nearly 20 years… I love Mozart. His music is a healing balm for the voice and the soul. The Don Giovanni music is just glorious.”

He also called it a tour de force for the performer, which is why he turned down earlier offers to step into the role until he felt “ready for it.”

Don Giovanni premiered in Prague on Oct. 29, 1787 as a “Drama giocoso” meaning a mix of comedic and dramatic elements. The story – written by librettist, Lorenzo da Ponte – follows Giovanni’s misadventures, which begin with his unwanted visit to Donna Anna and the killing of her father, the Commendatore (a person of importance/leader) in a duel. Giovanni escapes, only to attempt other seductions, and maneuvers of all sorts. But he has few victories.

“There’s comedy along the way. Don Giovanni is never successful in his scheming in this opera,” noted Verm.

In addition to Verm, OSA hired another seven outstanding singers for the show which was planned to be performed without choruses and crowds on stage due to safety reasons. Unfortunately, due to the San Antonio Symphony’s strike, there will no orchestra in the pit either. During the strike, SAS musicians are discouraged from performing for other companies, including OSA. Thus, the singers will be accompanied by pianist Mario Antonio Marra of the Lyric Opera of Chicago and harpsichordist and music director, Robert Tweten, an old friend of the San Antonio opera company, who conducted Faust here three seasons ago. It will be a 90-minute production without intermission, said stage director Garnett Bruce.

 “Of course, we are disappointed but we understand that there are differences that need to be worked out on both sides (of the SAS negotiations.) We are going to go ahead and present Don Giovanni because opera is first and foremost about the singers.” he said. “And we have an amazing cast of singers. Even with an abbreviated production, you will hear glorious voices in the Tobin Center.”

Bruce, who directed this opera once before ten years ago, found a new angle this time around.
“It’s great to come back to a masterpiece,” he noted, “but ten years later, the world has changed, so we look at the story through a different lens. The MeToo movement has changed our awareness of sexual abuse as something that should not be tolerated. So, in telling the story of Don Juan in 2021, we focus on crime and punishment in our version. He’s arrogant and unrepentant.”

How about the built-in humor about the great seducer who fail to seduce? We asked.

“After a success of the Marriage of Figaro (a previous Mozart-Da Ponte comic opera), the librettist felt that a comedy was in order. But Mozart found the sincerity, the pain and the humiliation of the characters that he could push in a musical way. All of the women have some very touching moments about their anger and their pain, their sorrow and their shame, and eventually their healing,” explained Bruce.

“While we can chuckle at the jokes and some comic moments, I think we can understand the greater moral lesson of the story,” added the director. Evildoers end up badly. Mozart and Da Ponte concocted a descend into hell for the don with the little help from supernatural forces.

Giovanni’s victims Donna Anna, Donna Elvira and Zerlina are portrayed by, respectively, Raquel Gonzalez, Karin Wolverton and Kresley Figueroa. Michael Sumuel is Leporello. Rounding up the cast are Joshua Davis, Mark Diamond and Kevin Thomson.
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Don Giovanni, Oct.7 & 9 at 7:30 p.m.; Tobin Center for the Performing Arts, Auditorium Circle; tickets@tobincenter.org; 210-223-8624.