AVA's 'Don Giovanni' an often-effortless staging

Has there ever been an operatic masterpiece as unforgiving as Don Giovanni?

When all goes well, the Mozart opera feels effortless - but that's only 20 percent of the time. Any weak link stands out because every character and staging element requires a fully realized effort to succeed at all. That said, Academy of Vocal Arts' Saturday outing with the opera achieved that effortlessness more than often enough to fulfill its function as platform for young artists finding their way into the opera. But from an audience standpoint, immersion was intermittent.

Important elements were there. With a traditional 17th-century Spain setting, the tiny Helen Corning Warden Theater stage had a series of archways with murals of Renaissance-era bodies in something of a jumble - appropriate to the essentially plotless opera in which Giovanni's victims try to bring him to justice. The space did not allow any sense of the opera closing in on him. A change of stage directors did not help: Tito Capobianco had to drop out after staging Act I when his wife, Gigi, passed away.

Capobianco reportedly wanted the title character to be an Antichrist; that doesn't make literal sense because such a character wouldn't have to be climactically dragged down to hell against his will. But when treated like an implication rather than an interpretation, that idea gave Act I an interesting edge: Giovanni kills the Commendatore as if it's everyday child's play and, at one point, rips the crucifix off Donna Anna, momentarily treating her like a hostage. Inevitably, the Act II staging by Justin Johnson didn't sustain that kind of tension; his work wasn't necessarily inferior, just different.

Conductor Christofer Macatsoris was the opera's Dionysian glue, with a swift, muscular manner full of details and often revealing the specific orchestral tint of each aria. Alex Lawrence headed the opening-night cast as a dashing, velvet-voice Giovanni, though his Act II serenade was surprisingly pedestrian. As Leporello, Nicholas Masters achieved the contradictory triumph of maintaining the blend-into-the-wallpaper anonymity of servitude, while also reflecting the situational ethics that make the opera's world go 'round.

The unlikely trio of Giovanni-hunters were played by three of AVA's best singers: In the theatrically bland but musically rich role of Don Ottavio, Taylor Stayton was all you might hope for. With her theatrical fire and amazing breath control, Michelle Johnson might've achieved the same distinction as Donna Anna had she not oversung in the hall's dry acoustics. Might that have also been a factor with Jan Cornelius, whose nervous vibrato suited the character of Donna Elvira, but not always her music? Best to hear them May 15 in the spacious sound of the Gordon Theater in Camden's Rutgers University.

David Patrick Stearns at dstearns@phillynews.com.

"Don Giovanni" will be repeated, with a changing cast, Tuesday and Thursday at AVA's Helen Corning Warden Theater; Saturday at Central Bucks South High School; May 10 and 12

at Centennial Hall in the Haverford School; and May 15

at Rutgers/Camden.

Information: 215-735-1685

or www.avaopera.org.