Don Giovanni

Don Giovanni is the part every baritone circles. He is not the villain that productions reduce him to, and not the hero that romantic readings save him as — he is something more uncomfortable: a man who refuses to repent, written by a composer who refuses to judge him. Mozart leaves the moral arithmetic to the audience, and that vacuum is where the role lives.

I approach Giovanni as a question, not an answer. The "Champagne aria" is not a celebration; it is a man outrunning silence. The serenade is not a seduction; it is a private rehearsal of tenderness he no longer believes in. By the supper scene, he is already half-stone — the Commendatore only completes a sentence he has been writing all evening.

Vocally, the part sits in the most exposed part of the baritone — the upper-middle passaggio — and Mozart never lets it warm. It must be sung with the same dryness, the same elegance of attack, that conversation demands. I work it the way one works a Schubert lied: each line as an argument, each rest as a thought.