Carsen’s production (I’m going to leave the highly skilled designers out of it, and the dramaturg as well, though he should probably be indicted as co-conspirator) is a jumble of pilfered postmodern notions and objects. Among them: Pandating (that is, the use of set pieces, costume, and accessories to disalow any ascription of period, past or present), with the consequence that no allusion may be taken literally, but only as metaphor, “reified”; the framing of the action as a flashback—the Don presents the last chapter of his life story as a reality show; different levels of reality shown as occurring simultaneously; the stage as mirror of the auditorium; chairs (Ionesco has a lot to answer for); the breaking of the proscenium, with characters (most often Leporello) taking pratfalls in the aisle, exiting by clambering into a box, etc., and the Mask Trio sung at the edge of the pit, directly in front of the conductor; the re-interpretation of nearly every character and scene, but not from any consistent theory of narrative or psychology. All these are distancing devices, guaranteeing that we cannot enter into the stage life with subjective identification, or naively “believe” in the proceedings. It’s not so much a matter of the context of no context as of the context of countless contexts, so that there can be no orientation except disorientation. It is possible to find in this great ingenuity and invention. I find desperation and confession of futility, if not of outright hostility.

The video reduction of all this, condemned as always to the camera’s inability to sustain p.o.v., cannot begin to cope with the constantly shifting scenic concoctions or the strained staging peculiarities. And it cannot avoid the eternal return to the close-up, which is even more than usually damaging (see below).

All these performers are certified international-level pros. But between some serious vocal frazzlements, the directorial conceits, and the clinical inspections by camera and mike, there’s little pleasure to be had from their conscientious work. It’s distressing to see and hear, at pointblank range, Barbara Frittoli, an artist of some distinction, being made to jerk and claw her way through an enactment of Elvira as hysteric while contorting her voice through every imaginable vowel compensation in search of centered pitch and a fugitive firmness of tone, or to watch Bryn Terfel, sustained notes loosening, sweating through a humorless janitorial take on Leporello. Giuseppe Filianoti, his glinty tenor efficient enough though never blandishing, and Štefan Kocán, his entire range overlaid with a monochromatic darkness, are blank onscreen presences as Ottavio and Masetto. Kwangchoul Youn, with an instrument of the right timbre and calibre, cannot provide the one thing a Commendatore must give us: tonal steadiness.

We are left with three performers able to catch our interest by eye, ear, or both. I enjoyed Anna Prohaska’s Zerlina throughout Act 1—nice singing of some body, a face and figure that survives a proximate view, and an honest, lovely enactment of Zerlina’s predicament. In Act 2, unfortunately, she is required to play through an absurd miming of Zerlina as dominatrix in “Batti, batti,” leading in turn to a quantity of straight-toned, off-the-voice inflection and an ugly excursion into a high embellishment. The Don is Peter Mattei, whose work in In the House of the Dead and Parsifal I have admired. I admire him here, too, for following through consistently with a concept of Don Giovanni as contemporary amoral cool guy and staying on track with his attractive light baritone. His technical ease makes him much easier to swallow than some of the others, but there’s no danger in his voice, and he too often alternates live, pleasing tone with a vibratoless croon that always suggests pitch flatness—”Deh, vieni alla finestra” is the worst example.