Opera in the park: Don Giovanni at Lago de Coslada. July 27, 2019.

Coslada is a city in the closest outskirts of Madrid. This summer, the city has scheduled a "cultural summer", in the Parque del Lago (the Lake park), where some theatrical or musical performances and concerts are held, totally free and open-air.

One of the activities scheduled is a performance of Mozart's Don Giovanni, by the opera troupe Camerata Lírica de España.

This troupe is usually performing in several auditories in small towns or cities, taking the opera and zarzuela to places where they are little performed. For this new production, which will tour some Spanish provinces in Autumn and Winter, the tenor and director Rodolfo Albero has prepared a classic staging in order to introduce this masterpiece to new audiences.

The opera was offered with piano accompaniment and some cuts, in order to end as soon as possible (it started at 22:00, lasting around 2 hours and 15 minutes with intermission), ending with Don Giovanni entering in hell. The piano was played by Sergio Kuhlmann.

The singers of the cast did their best during the performance. Raquel del Pino was a youthful, fresh Zerlina, Carmen Arrieta got a great ovation from the audience, and Elvira Padrino was an authoritative, powerful Donna Elvira. Houari López was the lead male singer as Don Ottavio, whose rendition of Dalla sua Pace was maybe the best moment in the night. Andrés del Pino was a Don Giovanni which had the profile and physique-du-rôle for the title role.  Abelardo Cárdenas as Leporello (with a good sense of comedy for this role) and Alberto Camón as Masetto and the Commendatore did well their parts.

Being an open-air performance, the audience could enjoy the magic of opera in a fresh, placid ambient of a lake in a park, but not without inconveniences: the amplification of the microphones was a bit loud.

The audience applauded the performance and, according to the comments heard from the closest people, this operatic proposal has been well received and hoped to be repeated in the coming years. If only this could replace the welcomed and enyojable performances of opera at the Temple of Debod in central Madrid, which were awaited every year from 2009 to 2014... the people of Coslada and its surroundings would have an annual appointing with free,open-air opera again.