Gehry + Rodarte: Don Giovanni

In one of the most boisterous and exciting moments of director Christopher Alden's Don Giovanni, which ran four performances in LA's Walt Disney Concert Hall from 18 to 26 May, the Don's servant Leporello (played with humor and dexterity by bass Kevin Burdette), sings of his master's ever-growing list of sexual conquests. With the aria Madamina, il catalogo è questo, Leporello rattles off the number of femmes wooed by Giovanni (baritone Mariusz Kwiecien) — 640 in Italy, 100 in France, a whopping 1003 in Spain — explaining that the Don is an equal opportunity seducer, unfettered by the rank, age, or looks of his next victim. Giovanni prefers the young innocent, of course, Leporello says, but no matter: the lecherous Don will have his way with an old cougar, but for the pleasure of adding her to his "list."

Of course, we wouldn't put it past the Don (or Leporello, for that matter) to keep an actual tally in his journal, but we do assume this list is metaphorical. It's a pointed gesture, then, when Leporello turns to the set surrounding him and begins to read it as though it is, in fact, a scroll. This is perhaps the most literal reference to the set, designed by Frank Gehry, in the whole of the performance. After all, Gehry's stage, despite where our minds may wander with the story told, is a valley surrounded by crumpled paper. White boulders of paper embrace the actors on stage, and black bounds the orchestra on the platform behind them. The actors on stage can see the conductor, Gustavo Dudamel, on screens overhead. Gehry's "paper" stage calls to mind all shapes of allusions, including crumpled bed sheets and the wrinkled folds of the complex, confused and ruffled human brain. Leporello's use of the paper to ground a metaphor, then, is a brief and notable role reversal between the story and its setting. Outside these few moments, it's Gehry's stage that serves as the metaphor, elevating the libretto and music on paper.

To get the obvious out of the way: I do wonder, as I sit in my second level seat above stage right, whether Gehry's design for the set is not, in part, a riff on the silly rumour that his design for the Disney Concert Hall itself was inspired by a crumpled piece of paper. No reason to abstain from metafiction, here, seeing as my fellow audience members and I are seated in a Gehry, looking at a Gehry. No reason to approach this production humorlessly, either, as despite the vile actions of Don Giovanni and the dominating message that an eternity in hell is what awaits all "evildoers," there are more than a few moments for laughter in this highly dramatic opera. After all, Mozart thought of it as a comedy.

Gehry's stage, including moveable white paper fragments behind which characters can hide, gives the appearance of physical lightness and simplicity. This is a marked contrast to, say, the expected bulk and heavy drapery of the 18th century. Of course, today's stage designs are often abstract interpretations of historical settings; but "cues" of a given time-period frequently make their way (and weight) even into abstraction. Gehry's design, on the other hand, puts the highest demands on one's suspension of disbelief. This is a stage that refuses to mark a place in time. It doesn't set a mood, so much as it allows moods to overcome it.

The same is true of the costumes, by Kate and Laura Mulleavy, founders of Rodarte. The leading males, for example, dress in soft, white "armour." Their hard breastplates mimic creases and folds of paper in their coloring. Women's gowns are fantastical, and, it follows, of no certain archeology. The statue of the deceased Commendatore (bass Stefan Kocan), who comes to drag the unrepentful Don Giovanni into the pits of hell, looks appropriately modern in his otherworldliness — more Robo-datore than be-robed spirit. Again, no trace of a specific time or place — except, maybe, the very time and place in which we find ourselves.

Free of expository props and context, the comprehensive design puts great emphasis, and pressure, on the actors to fill the stage, making for a very physical performance. Three large white cubes, repositioned throughout the show, serve as platforms for the characters: for their stances of victory, but also their prostrate bodies. At one point, Leporello is limp with dread and fear, and drapes himself over a cube, which simultaneously serves as Don Giovanni's lavish dining table. Here, lying on his stomach, arms askew, Leporello delivers his operatic belts. No small physical feat. But it isn't only the singer doing the work, in this case; the audience also works to understand the scene beyond the text and beyond the accompanying "visual."

From my vantage point, I see the marks on the stage floor, I see the actors just before they go on; I also see the creases and edges of Gehry's paper. There is no curtain to separate the reality offstage, from the one on it. The fiction of Don Giovanni is, in effect, fully integrated into its surrounding nonfiction — the stage is also the architecture and atmosphere beyond it. Rather than "killing the magic" of theater, this situation makes the opera more relevant, and brings it directly into the world we occupy. Because the stage and costumes cannot be read literally, the "text" should not be taken at face value, either. The moral of the story does not have to be that hell awaits all sinners (although, to each his own). Instead, the moral of the story, and the stage, might simply be: meaning is often abstract and figurative, while importance often crawls from underneath the folds and from behind the creases.