With the exception of the noble but impotent Don Ottavio, a tenor part, the male roles all call for low voices that are potentially interchangeable. That’s how, last week at the Metropolitan Opera, the Italian bass-baritone Luca Pisaroni came to make his role debut as Don Giovanni in the same drab 2011 production by Michael Grandage, in which he has previously sung Leporello. Years earlier, in Salzburg, Mr. Pisaroni was Masetto. Meanwhile the Met’s current Leporello, the Russian bass Ildar Abdrazakov, has starred here before as the Don. Mr. Pisaroni sounded muscular and suave in the title role, though his Don Giovanni felt more like a frat boy than a shape-shifting object of fascination.

Source: New York Times February 03, 2019 19:18 UTC