FAILURE TO INCITE

Director Graham Vick was disappointed last week when his “Don Giovanni” at Glyndebourne failed to provoke demonstrations of disapproval. He is, after all, in the business of trying to shock. “No, this time the overall reaction was one of provocation fatigue: the seen-that, used-the-T-shirt, thrown-away-the-mug sense of déjà vu that marked the fag end of Peter Jonas’s PowerHouse regime at English National Opera in the late 1980s.” – The Sunday Times (UK)