Stripping the sets and costumes from opera doesn't have to mean stripping the drama, and baritone Florian Boesch, plain-clothed and propped against a music stand, proved exactly why Don Giovanni works in concert. This opera is about messy relationships, about people's ability to mistreat each other and themselves, so its drama can be distilled into body language and, crucially, musical nuance.
Boesch is expert in both. From the swagger to the lascivious smarm lacing La Ci Darem la Mano and Deh Vieni Alla Finestra, two of the sweetest tunes Mozart ever wrote, his Giovanni was as defined a characterisation as any fully staged performance. Vito Priante's spirited Leporello made an excellent accomplice, and Kate Royal's Donna Elvira was a lesson in shoulder acting (hunched for indignant, curled back for in-love and appealing), though the boomy Usher Hall acoustics didn't do her expressive soprano justice. Malin Christensson's voice is more petite but its purity carries; her Zerlina was a charmer. The casting mismatch was Susan Gritton's Donna Anna, whose weighty phrasing sagged against the otherwise sprightly flow.
Conductor Robin Ticciati, fresh from Glyndebourne and impeccably sensitive to his singers' needs, turns technical limitations into convincing musical gestures. Perhaps it's a politeness he'll grow out of – another conductor might have forced Gritton to keep up – but overaccommodating is a rare and happy complaint, and in general his sense of architecture is breathtaking. The concert opened his second season as the SCO's principal conductor, and judging by the rapport the orchestra isn't regretting extending Ticciati's contract until 2015. The evening was dedicated to Charles Mackerras, whose long association with the orchestra is etched into the way it plays Mozart: that lovely combination of elegant lines punctuated by joyous, cheeky ornamentation. No doubt Mackerras would have been touched.
