Currentzis set out, he tells us,  ” . . . to capture Don Giovanni in a way that I would want to listen to it myself,” and I’d say that while he’s no doubt disappointed by how this or that turned out, he has by and large succeeded. Of course he is right when he says the score is one of astonishing beauties and surprises, and that we often miss many of them, either because our attention is elsewhere, or because they are insufficiently articulated in the performance to begin with. And I’ll gladly confess that in terms both of the overall sound world he’s created  and the many alternative interpretive choices he has made along the way, he’s perked up my ears and expanded my range of vision regarding a piece I have seen and heard countless times. So I’m grateful for that. The sounds and choices I find intriguing have to do almost exclusively with the orchestra (the Musica Aeterna, a band of high accomplishment), whose soundworld looks backward more than forward in time from D.G.‘s birthdate (1787). Thus, relative to what we’ve become accustomed to over the past century, it throws us a good distance into the territories occupied by our Classical and Baroque performance-practice, original-instrument ensembles, in this case rendering their music with great energy and technical expertise. (And now that the performance-practice movement has come to full maturity, it’s often the case that such ensembles play with more alertness and commitment than even the top repertory-company orchestras. Usually commanded by zealous missionaries, they’re also zeroed in on narrower targets. See my remarks on Norma, Nov. 12 & 27, 2017.)

In a general sense, energy and expertise are always merits. There’s a considerable impetus to this reading, so long as the orchestra’s playing. In Act 1, the tempi of most of the solo numbers are so quick as to give an impression of rushing them out of the way so we can get to those nice, drawn-out recits. There’s an occasional exception. The trio following the Commendatore’s death in Scene 1 (andante, down from molto allegro, say all three of my scores) ^(I)is almost a stop-frame moment, and the opening of Anna’s great recitativo accompagnato (“Don Ottavio, son morta!“—the scores suggest allegro assai) is a sudden, heavily inflected slowdown. But most of the time, this short-aria, long-recit proportion prevails right up to the first finale. The reason many of the recits are so extended is to allow for what the performers conceive as more natural reaction times for the dialogue. One of many examples: “Purchè lasciam le donne,” says Leporello (Act 2, Sc. 1), and Giovanni, instead of coming right back at him with “Lasciar le donne? Pazzo!” takes a very long time, as if seriously considering the matter, before responding, barely audibly, as if to himself. I’m all for searching out the playing qualities of moments, and some like this and others might hold in the theatre, with the aid of physical behavior. But the progress here is gradual to the point of losing the trail, and is marked by patches of dead air. No amount of filling-in from the continuo (see below) can compensate.