Barihunk Mariusz Kwiecien injured his handsome back during today’s dress rehearsal of Don Giovanni at the Met and was taken to the hospital, tweets Dan Wakin. As La Cieca writes this, Kwiecien’s cover Dwayne Croft is at the Met rehearsing the opera’s first act swordfight.  

La Cieca’s spy reports:

That’s about all I can tell you about the accident. Mariusz had told people that he was injured a while back, but that he was completely healed. He seems to think that this was a recurrence of the earlier injury. He seemed to be in considerable pain, and staff was sufficiently alarmed to call EMT immediately.

Other than that things went pretty well, but I’m sure that the accident threw off people’s timing. Croft had been involved in rehearsals, and really did an excellent job under the circumstances. (Although he didn’t seem to be expecting “Finch’han del vino” to be taken quite as fast as it was. Exciting though.)

Luisi was extremely good.  Interesting and intelligent ideas everywhere. Orchestra seemed quite invigorated by it all.

Frittoli was a superb Elvira. Marina Rebekah reminded me a bit of Edda Moser, whom I liked. Voice is a bit hard, but accurate and carries very well. She sort of bobbled the great “abbastanza” line, but I liked her a lot.

Pisaroni was very good. We’ve come a long way from the buffo approach to this role. He is equal in virility and power to the Don, just not in class: that’s what eats him.

Vargas was good. Quite elegant, and a good bit more masculine than other Ottavios. The face is rather buffo, and a bit of a problem in a cast where everyone else looks so appropos.

The production is basically a unit set trying not to look like a unit set. A straightforward unit set might have been better. The “Hollywood Squares” analogy seems to be carrying through to this production: not so hot an idea.

(Photo: Nick Heavican)

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