In the playing there is an often welcome clarity of texture: the clichéd analogy for such restorations—to the cleaning of some some thickly begrimed master painting—is applicable. The playing of the strings tends toward minimal vibrato or, at times, none.  Voicings and little events we sometimes sense subliminally but don’t actively register jump into our awareness, and while not all of them ultimately belong there, they always have a first-time “Ah-hah!” kind of interest. The ornamentations Currentzis has devised add to the elaboration of texture (more moving parts); at times they strike me as charming and à propos, at others purely decorative. At places directly evocative of contemporaneous practice, the instrumental interplay is wonderful to hear: I’ve never heard the famous three-way duel of orchestras in the finale of Act 1, or the simpler tang of the Greatest Hits of ’87 in that of Act 2, given such character and exactitude. (Currentzis has added sackbuts to his instrumentation list, whether on any authority but his own I don’t know, but I like the sound.)

To one of the questions I raised in my last post, concerning the nature and function of the keyboard accompaniment, he provides the most lavishly embellished of answers. Fortepiano is the instrument of choice here, and you’d better agree, because you aren’t going to be out of its range for more than a few moments running. During the recitatives you’ll be treated to cascades, garlands, daisy-chains, and dramatic roilings of notes; then, as garni, curlicues, pointillistic dots and dabs, and finally, as palate cleanser, the tiniest of tinkles. In some of the ensembles, too, you’ll still hear it running along back there. The usage is now ornamental, now participatory, carrying some burden of meaning. In the recitatives, there are spots where I find this helpful, as when a suggestive transition is made, or a bit of suspense creeps in. Most of the time, I really wish these good players (there are two, alternating) would retreat to a neutral corner so that my attention can stay on the characters.

Each listener has to decide for him- or herself whether or not this orchestral soundworld is one Don Giovanni inhabits to its advantage. I’m certainly happy to add it to my menu of possibilities, though I have trouble imagining how it might work with what I would consider a plausible cast (see below). And I couldn’t quite follow what Currentzis means when he speaks of the “action of the music itself,” as if that were somehow detached from the “captivating plot”—i.e., from dramatic action. Except that when I took note of what my mind’s eye was seeing, it was usually the orchestra, marching in a sort of Praetorian Guard phalanx, with the characters of the drama peeping out from behind corners, or running alongside to keep up, commoners cheering the Triumph. At that, I preferred this spectacle to the one provided by Robert Carsen and his cohort on the Scala DVD, partly because for all my reservations about Currentzis’ vision, I think he, the interpreter-in-chief here, has a better feel for the work than Carsen, the honcho there, and partly because the second main contributor to the mind’s-eye version is . . . me.