Hvorostovsky Unmasked.(Dmitri Hvorostovsky stars in 'Don Giovanni Unmasked')

LOTS OF SINGERS HAVE PLAYED BOTH DON GIOVANNI AND LEPORELLO. DMITRI HVOROSTOVSKY LEAVES THEM ALL IN THE DUST BY DOING BOTH AT ONCE -- IN A NEW MOVIE.

From every conceivable angle, Dmitri Hvorostovsky seems born to play Don Giovanni. The Siberian baritone's premier portrayal of Mozart's aristocratic seducer took place in February 1999 on the stage of Geneva's Grand Theatre, in a production by Matthias Langhoff, which, according to the baritone, involved "Cadillacs, call girls and clochards." It was hardly the kind of classic production for which his careful study of "all available recordings and videos" of the piece had prepared him, but Hvorostovsky, mindful of current trends in opera, played along. Then there was a Luca Ronconi staging at the Salzburg Festival in summer 1999 -- another lesson in "director's theater." Don Giovanni graduated to a Rolls-Royce, and the setting was dominated by various timepieces, implying that the scapegrace's hourglass was running out. The production was savaged by the critics, though Hvorostovsky and the other singers -- Karita Mattila (Anna), Barbara Frittoli (Elvira), Maria Bayo (Zerlina) and Franz Hawlata (Leporello) -- were generally lauded.

That same year, the baritone had the rare opportunity to sing both Don Giovanni and Leporello in a single production. A few singers have tackled the roles onstage in alternation -- Jose van Dam, Ferruccio Furlanetto, Samuel Ramey and Bryn Terfel come to mind. But a made-for-TV condensation of the opera gave Hvorostovsky the chance to do what is impossible onstage. The idea came from a remarkable Canadian performing-arts film organization, Rhombus Media, and from the fertile imagination of award-winning director Barbara Willis Sweete. The hour-long film encompasses all the scenes in which Leporello appears.

The twist is that Leporello is transported to a 1930s Hollywood screening room, where as producer, director and star of a film-within-a-film, he "reveals" the secret of Don Giovanni's identity. It's a full-color fantasy come true for the put-upon servant; all slicked up in tails and white tie, he shows his audience a black-and-white film of a rather disheveled, masked and mustachioed Don Giovanni going through his series of seductions. The "audience" consists of the participants in the filmed opera scenes, garbed for a `30s film gala. The set is simple enough -- a raked platform bisected by a simulated rocky chasm on one level, a series of all-purpose arches on another. The screen on which Leporello projects his movie is the only other major scenic element. Mysterious, hooded figures hover around the fringes.

It doesn't take long to realize that in this version Leporello and the Don represent opposite sides of the same person. There is considerable intercutting between the color and black-and-white scenes. Leporello sings his catalogue aria to the Hollywood Elvira, sidling up to her suggestively, finally leading her in a dance with a tango-backbend finale, all the while obviously relishing the recitation of his former master's conquests. Things start getting ambiguous when Don and servant swap identities during the serenade scene. (Hint: the character without the mask is supposed to be Leporello.) Hvorostovsky is at his most vocally seductive here, his serenade sweetly floating on long, caressing legato lines. If Don Giovanni's courtship of Elvira's maid seems especially tender, it's because he's singing to his real-life sweetheart, Florence Illi, a mezzo he met during his appearances in Geneva.

Though most of the major scenes had ...