CHICAGO — To kick off the Lyric Opera of Chicago's 50th anniversary season, Bryn Terfel went to hell, lusting after women all the way.
The Lyric Opera began in February 1954 with a production of Mozart's "Don Giovanni" that preceded its first actual season by nearly eight months. So it was only natural for the company to open its 50th season Saturday night by revisiting the tragicomic tale of Don Juan and his grisly fate.
The 1954 production, starring the Italian bass Nicola Rossi-Lemeni, has gone down in Chicago legend. And — a few opening-night glitches notwithstanding — there's no reason the 2004 version shouldn't as well.
For starters, there was the slimmed-down Terfel himself, demonstrating why he is considered the modern master of the title role. Terfel's Don was unrepentantly arrogant and amoral but also a seducer whose best pickup lines were no longer working. Terfel has said he sees the character as a psychopath, and that's the way he played him — a psychopath with a very fine voice.
Terfel's hand-picked conductor, Christoph Eschenbach, making his Lyric debut, was an obvious master of the Mozart score. Eschenbach kept his tempi crisp through the dancing and the belly laughs, then glided into a graceful legato for the plaintive songs of those whose lives have been blighted by the Don's lechery. Without stooping to slasher-movie melodrama, he succeeded in bringing just the right sudden chill as the slain Commendatore's statue arrived for dinner to drag the Don to his infernal reward.
For all of Terfel's mastery, though, this "Don Giovanni" couldn't have worked as well as it did without its supporting cast, and under the stage direction of Germany's Peter Stein, the entire production was steamy.
As the Don's less-than-faithful servant Leporello, bass-baritone Ildebrando D'Arcangelo was happily willing to play against his Italian heartthrob image. His Leporello was one of the scruffiest ever seen. His clothes seemed ready to rot off, and his "dirt" makeup was so heavy that it gave the production one of its few false notes.
But D'Arcangelo's voice is a good partner for Terfel's, and he also matched the Welshman in the opera's considerable humor and horseplay, trading insult for insult.
As the sole tenor in a work dominated by lower male voices, American Kurt Streit, singing Don Ottavio, resisted the temptation to overcompensate with volume. He sang the role as it should be sung, with a noble delicacy. Streit pulled off the difficult feat of singing his Scene Two soliloquy, "Dalla sua pace," pianissimo, but with perfect projection. He was rewarded with a standing ovation at the curtain calls.
Also getting a standing ovation was Canadian-American soprano Erin Wall as Donna Anna, who emerged as the evening's heroine — in more ways than one. As a last-minute replacement for the ailing Karita Mattila, the understudy stepped in and did a faultless job. Her duets with Streit were particularly good, and her Scene Two highlight, "Or sai chi l'onore," left the audience hushed.
American mezzo Susan Graham also brought beauty to her portrayal of the rejected Donna Elvira. Without shirking Donna Elvira's comic aspects, Graham made her the most complex of the characters psychologically. She had bitterness toward the Don but still felt her love could redeem him.
But Don Giovanni is irredeemable, as Andrea Silvestrelli's Commendatore proved.
Isabel Bayrakdarian and Kyle Ketelson were more than effective as the betrothed peasants, Zerlina and Masetto.