By Kate Masters
Only a week before the final performances of the Castleton Festival, founder Maestro Lorin Maazel died, leaving his legacy with the scores of young artists whom he personally selected and trained. Despite his notable absence, the closing notes of the opera festival will still play on, aided by his wife, Dietlinde, general manager Nancy Gustafson, and the renowned conductor’s many protégées.
If you haven’t already taken advantage of the month-long festival, its final days this season are some of the best opportunities to attend. Maazel started Castleton in 2009 as a way to mentor young musicians, and almost all of the performers this year were personally trained or advised by the maestro himself.
Beyond working with a master class of conductors, Maazel also worked personally with the performers in the festival’s two opera productions, Madame Butterfly and Don Giovanni. Javier Arrey, the titular lead character in Don Giovanni, says that it’s very unusual for such a famous conductor to spend so much face time with the singers, but it speaks to the level of care that Maazel poured into Castleton. The festival became the sole focus of his creative energies after illness forced him to resign his post as conductor of the Munich Philharmonic.
The final performance of Don Giovanni this Friday at 8 p.m. may be the best way to grasp the full Castleton experience. Though the acclaimed Italian stage director Giandomenico Vaccari directed the show, Maazel’s spirit still shines in every note—according to Jennifer Black, who plays Donna Elvira in the opera, there was a 50/50 collaboration between the conductor and the director, with Maazel approving every decision.
Besides Maazel’s deep involvement with the performance, Don Giovanni is widely considered to be the most perfect opera ever written. The story of a sociopathic womanizer (or a soulful but incorrigible hedonist, depending on who you listen to), the opera ultimately deals with society as a whole, and what becomes of those who flout its rules. The eponymous lead objectifies thousands of women and kills an innocent man without remorse, but the director of the performance ultimately decides whether he goes to hell at the end of the performance.
As Castleton’s Don Giovanni, Arrey interprets the character as a man who is not just mentally ill, but who completes his seductions to fill a void in his own life.
“In the end, Don Giovanni does not seduce these women because he is a lover, but because there is a hole in his own life,” Arrey says. “He is empty, there is emptiness there, and he is always trying to find something to fill himself up.”
Black plays Donna Elvira, one of Giovanni’s more serious conquests, who vows vengeance when she learns of his womanizing ways. Throughout the opera, she is a perennial thorn in his side, thwarting his seduction attempts and warning other characters of his amoral ways. Black calls Elvira a “cockblock,” but says she’s the only player in the performance who wishes for a reformed Don Giovanni.
“Elvira is a woman who sees his ways, and has to come to terms with the fact that the man she loves is evil,” Black says. “She’s the only person, in the end, who wants him to change. Everyone else wants vengeance, but she wants both.”
Don Giovanni is the final available opera at Castleton, but there are still ample opportunities to see other musicians who worked under Maazel’s tutelage. At 4 p.m. on Saturday, chamber players will grace the stage at the Theatre House, and there’s a symphonic concert at 7 p.m. featuring some of the greatest love arias in opera. Though its founder has taken his final bow onstage, Castleton lives on, and will end its sixth season with a flourish befitting Maazel.