Performance Review: Don Giovanni, San Francisco Opera, 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.

Fast, fierce and breathless, that short aria is among the hardest things to get right in this opera. And on Saturday night, during the opening of the San Francisco Opera's summer season at the War Memorial Opera House, baritone Mariusz Kwiecien and Music Director Donald Runnicles conspired to give the piece one of the most exciting accounts I've ever heard.

The music's balance of exuberance and demonic drive was beautifully rendered, Kwiecien's singing was robust and well defined, and the two established a headlong tempo that never faltered. The result was an invitation to a party that you would be equally afraid of missing or attending.

[...]The evening's heroes were Kwiecien and Runnicles, who alone seemed to have fully internalized the unholy energy that pulses through this opera.

[...]Kwiecien, the Polish baritone who debuted here as Marcello in the 2004 production of Puccini's "La Bohème," turned in a performance marked by vocal grandeur and elegant erotic menace. His voice is burnished and full of subtle coloration, and his dynamic range encompasses everything from the most insinuating whisper to the boldest shout.

Most interesting was Kwiecien's intrepid refusal to lighten the shadows of the role. Even at his most sonorously seductive -- in the duet "La ci darem la mano," done with extraordinary insistence, and the serenade "Deh vieni alla finestra" -- Kwiecien never let the character's dangerous side fade from view."

Joshua Kosman, "Splendor of Giovanni too short",
San Francisco Chronicle, June 4, 2007