I was astonished to read in Tomassini’s Times review of the Met’s new Don Giovanni that Dwayne Croft had been assigned to cover the lead Don, Mariusz Kwiecien (Croft finished the dress rehearsal when Kwiecien hurt his back last week) but was not scheduled for even a single performance of the work. The Met, in fact, seems determined that Croft not get the chance to pinch hit before a paying audience. For when it was clear that Kwiecien was going to have to cancel at least part of his run, the Met did not see fit to allow Croft to step in. Instead it tapped Peter Mattei, even at the cost of forcing Mattei to move out of some scheduled Figaros in the Met’s Barber of Seville. This despite the fact that, as Tomassini notes, Mattei had no familiarity with the new production, whereas Croft of course did.
Croft is a great baritone with years of experience, a career developed at and by the Met in large part—he began there 20 years ago in bit roles but was soon singing leads. His voice is still in fine fettle, but what the Met is now serving him are slim pickings indeed. While Kwiecien, Mattei, and Gerald Finley (who sings Don G at the Met next year) are certainly nothing I’d turn out of the theater, I would have been just as interested in hearing Croft sing his first Met Don since 1997.