From around the world: Cooperstown, NY.(North America--Don Giovanni, director Francisco Negrin, designer Carol Bailey)(Opera Review)

"Concept" productions, though by now an old-fashioned idea themselves, were the rule at this summer's Glimmerglass Opera in its twenty-ninth season. A dour take on Don Giovanni by director Francisco Negrin and designer Carol Bailey (seen Aug. 22) took the Peter Sellars egalitarian approach, presenting the Don as a menacing thug who'd set off anyone's burglar alarm. This bald capo was shadowed by a henchman, Leporello, in a shabby business suit--forget about the effect of their costume change in Act II. Most of the opera was enacted in what looked like the basement of an office building, sans furnace or plumbing (or lighting). The Stone Guest didn't appear, being replaced by a coffin and a deus-ex-machina voice from above.

Given the lack of visual appeal, attention reverted to the superb musical execution under Stewart Robinson, the company's music director, who maintained a dynamic equipoise between driving drama and lyric flow. The singers used appoggiaturas, ornaments and cadenzas with stylish panache, while the harpsichord enhanced their recitatives with subtle commentary. Mozart's revised score for the Vienna premiere was chosen, substituting "Dalla sua pace" for "Il mio tesoro," adding "Mi tradi" for Elvira and a buffo duet in which Zerlina intimidates Leporello, but the epilogue from the original Prague version was reinstated.

Palle Knudsen and Kyle Ketelson, working in close tandem as Giovanni and Leporello, sang and acted vigorously, tangling with the spirited Anna of Maria Kanyova, wrought-up Elvira of Amy Burton and sassy Zerlina of Heather Johnson. John McVeigh offered a concerned Ottavio, Jeremy Galyon a strapping Masetto, Gustav Andreassen an imposing but incongruously young-looking Commendatore.

Orlando (Aug. 23 matinee), the plum of this season's crop, adds another to the company's impressive list of Handel productions. Here the staging notions of Chas Rader-Shieber and verdant vision of designer David Zinn responded to the idiosyncratic Handelian mix of irony, pathos and elegance. A woodland setting prevailed, holding forth both bosky solace and mysterious depth, breaking into pieces when the story line broke or moved to "another part of the forest."

David Pittsinger's imposing bass made the magician Zoroastro the master of ceremonies for this mythological drama, in which Orlando's fits of madness, extravagantly unfurled by Bejun Mehta's strong, expressive countertenor, centered on his fixation with Angelica, whose plight found sympathetic voice in Joyce Guyer's volatile soprano. Michael Maniaci, billed as a male soprano, gracefully registered the youthful impulse and puzzlement of Angelicas suitor, Medoro, while Christine Brandes waxed both agile and eloquent as the shepherdess Dorinda, herself in love with Medoro but doomed to disappointment. There was plenty of chance for Amor (Cupid), a silent character assigned to the playful Julian Gialanela, to shoot arrows at his hapless victims. Under Bernard Labadie, the orchestra chirped, chortled and sighed over Handel's bird calls, asides and breezes.

Robert Kurka's The Good Soldier Schweik (Aug. 23 evening) began life in 1958, during a Ford Foundation-sponsored series of American works at New York City Opera. Though not revived there, it acquired a following and has reappeared in other theaters. Jaroslav Hasek's novel (originally serialized stories about the mischief wrought by an Everyman soldier in the Austro--Hungarian army during World War I) presents an antiwar message in the guise of satirical entertainment. Much of its sly tone is captured in the libretto by Abel Meeropol, an "old lefty" writing under the name Lewis Allan, and in Kurka's score for military band, which shares the crisp incisiveness of Stravinsky's ...