From around the world: Los Angeles.(North America ... a Polish production of Don Giovanni is reenacted across the Atlantic)(Opera Review)

A staging of Don Giovanni that honored the rubrics of Lorenzo da Ponte's dramatic outlines, and nothing more, would probably rank these days as downright retrograde. Such backward steps certainly do not figure in the seventeen-year history of Los Angeles Opera. Its first production--by Jonathan Miller, in 1991, all in gray on Robert Israel's Stonehenge of a set--moved Mozart's sublime drama into a bleak region somewhere beyond the edge of the world. In a second production (seen May 31), bleak was changed to black.

Mariusz Trelinski's production hailed from Warsaws Polish National Opera, with unit set by Boris Kudlicka and costumes by Arkadius. Of scenery there was none; black walls, streaked with multicolored thin bands, surrounded a pit midstage. From this black hole an open-sided coffin rose and fell. Into that hole toppled the murdered Commendatore in the opera's opening scene. Out of that hole emerged that Commendatore at the denouement, quite a bit the worse for wear--not a majestic statue but a mouldered, ragged mess. A bevy of dancing trees momentarily eased the bleakness in the Act I finale. For the great Act II sextet, the walls became mirrors, the six singers a thundering herd. For the Act II finale, the Don had to make do without a dining table.

To a kindly disposed observer, the evening added up to a display of clever but willful stage ...