I had mixed feelings about Donald G. today and only listened halfway through. That means I missed the part of the opera I really like - the spooky part - but I just got tired of the endless, formulaic recitatives, the too-close microphones (as MAS and I just mentioned), and an unglamorous cast.
Peter Mattei has a peculiar voice: it has a pleasant sound, but it doesn't seem powerful, brilliant, dark, sensual, or anything else exciting. His vibrato is extremely subtle, and he employs a lot of straight tone. The result is that he projects, vocally at least, none of the machismo or charisma Donnie needs to make him the semi-mythical center of the opera we've always thought he was. Apparently this Met offering is a "contemporary" production, very grim and gray, and I have no doubt that the point of it is to deglamorize old Don - to transform the traditional roguish libertine into a garden-variety rapist. "Unfortunately - or fortunately" (to quote an even more loathsome Donald in his recent self-convicting testimony) - it didn't work for me, since I couldn't watch but could only listen to Mozart's music, which is anything but grim and gray.
None of the other voices were especially interesting, although none were bad. Don's sidekick was OK but his voice wasn't flattered by the mic. Ana Maria Martinez was a manic and, apparently, funny Elvira (she sometimes rolled her Rs in a comical way), Federica Lombardi seemed a small-voiced but enthusiastic Anna, and Ben Bliss was a pleasant, generic Ottavio. When the Met does Mozart we tend to be spared most of the wobbles that now come packaged with Verdi, Wagner, Puccini and Strauss. But for my tastes Mozart isn't very rewarding unless the singing is A+ (you know, Pinza, Rethberg, Grummer, Schwarzkopf and the like). Good luck with that. It also helps to trim the recitatives back to an absolute minimum necessary to carry the plot. Sorry, Da Ponte! It was mentioned that today the recitatives were accompanied in part by a theorbo, which is a gigantic lute. Is that authentic for the late 1800s?
I should put in a good word for Nathalie Stutzmann, who gave me a tense, exciting overture that aroused greater expectations than the opera could fulfill.