(Photo: John Lee)
Kwiecien, Runnicles are masterful but Mozart opera yearns for focus

Joshua Kosman [SF Chronicle, 4 June 2007]

Toward the end of Act 1 of Mozart's "Don Giovanni," the licentious title character describes the party -- orgy might be a better word for it -- that he's about to throw at his villa as part of an elaborate plot to seduce an innocent country lass. The wine will flow, there will be plenty of dancing and loose women, and pleasure, in Don Giovanni's darkly obsessive conception of the term, will be unbridled.