Don Giovanni, Royal Opera House

Francesca Zambello’s production of Don Giovanni may only be 10 years old, but is already showing signs of decrepitude. Even back in its youth in 2002-3, this staging never had much of a spring in its step, but at least there were some fantastic casts to compensate. Bryn Terfel, Anna Netrebko, Simon Keenlyside and Erwin Schrott have all taken their turn here, but even with Gerald Finley returning in the title role there’s little the current incumbents can do to do rescue this aged and confused attempt at a seduction.

Set outside what appears to be a particularly ugly municipal swimming pool c1990 – all glass panes and curving edges – Zambello’s tragedy plays out under the constant gaze of a Madonna. Perched precariously (and nonsensically) above the action, hands aloft in pity or helplessness, the statue is as ineffectual a moral framing device as the closing ensemble, though seemingly lacking any of Mozart’s irony. The Act I finale calls the revolve into play, flipping us from 1990s modernism into rather half-hearted 1790s decadence, and making brief sense of the quasi-authentic jewel coloured costumes. Visually it’s all functional enough, but really the best that can be said for the late Maria Bjørnson’s designs is that (with the exception of the suspended hand of doom that signals the Commendatore’s acquiescence – a bewildering piece of visual distraction) they don’t actively get in the way.

There’s little specificity to the production and still less psychology, leaving singers desperately alone and exposed dramatically. If revival director Duncan MacFarland had given Katarina Karnéus’s Donna Elvira any instructions other than to overact in a wilfully unfocused sort of way then they were never evident. Lorenzo Regazzo as Leporello missed more laughs than he hit, while Irini Kyriakidou’s Zerlina defied Mozart’s most exquisitely characterised vocal writing to deliver bland efficiency; even Gerald Finley’s Don (pictured right with Karneus as Elvira) was a rather quiet affair, lacking his usual presence and failing to bring the necessary menace to Mozart’s libertine. Vocally however his was certainly the most consistent performance of the night, his characteristically assured delivery lacking only the electricity that the production seemed to drain from everything it touched.

While Adam Plachetka’s dark-toned Masetto was a pleasant surprise – a personality and voice travelling easily out into the amphitheatre – and Matthew Polenzani (as a particularly Italianate Don Ottavio) conjured a miraculous pianissimo for the da capo of “Dalla sua pace”, Regazzo’s Leporello was the evening’s greatest disappointment. Under-projected both dramatically and vocally (can there be a voice that has fallen more steeply away from its early potential?), his was a catalogue aria almost entirely without laughs, and while he warmed up for the comedic seduction of Elvira it didn’t seem enough to compensate for the lack of earlier personality, or the blandness of his contribution to the fateful closing dinner scene.