Hello Gentlemen,
It's Asian Nicole. Don Giovanni is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It is based on the legends of Don Juan, a fictional libertine and seducer. It was premiered by the Prague Italian opera at the Estates Theatre on October 29, 1787. Da Ponte's libretto was billed, like many of its time, as dramma giocoso, a term that denotes a mixing of serious and comic action. Mozart entered the work into his catalogue as an opera buffa. Although sometimes classified as comic, it blends comedy, melodrama and supernatural elements.
You have never seen anything in your life quite like the production of Don Giovanni, Directed by Dmitri Tcherniakov, Conducted by Michael Hofstetter which the Canadian Opera Company is operating this opera from January 24 to February 21. Last night, I was so glad that my opera professor invited me to join with him to see the wonderful opera which I longed for at the Four Seasons Centre, downtown, Toronto.
In the opera Don Giovanni, three women fall in love with the same womanizer.
Zerlina is a young woman who becomes mesmerized by the older man who fearlessly takes what he wants. Donna Anna, Zerlina’s mother, also succumbs to his advances, which threaten both women’s engagements to marry others. Donna Elvira is an ex-conquest of the cad who wants to give him one last chance.
So....what is the attraction to this bad boy?
Zerlina says “he is a charismatic man. It’s not that he is handsome, it is that he has an air about him that’s so different from anything I’ve seen before.”
“Don Giovanni is my drug,” explains Zerlina. “I lost my balance when I met him. We all yearn for something deeper, to be with someone who makes you feel so special.”
Her poor boyfriend, “who’ll do for now,” doesn’t stand a chance against this towering presence, she adds.
For Donna Anna, “He’s kind of dishevelled, not subtle. But there is something magnetic, compelling about him,” Archibald says.
“My take is that he’s a little of bit under the whim of his own charisma.”
She says. “The sex is part of it, free love. He thinks, ‘I can love you and love her too.’ That’s kind of the idea.”
Meanwhile, Donna Elvira watches the action play out with resignation.
“Yes, I do love the man, he has a magnetic personality. He’s really good at doing the right thing at the right time, knowing what you need to hear.
“What is interesting is watching what happens when you realize that you are not special. He does it to everybody. You’re made to look like a fool.”
Hmmmm....from all of above, needless to say what a scoundrel Don Giovanni is.
Putting the opera into a contemporary time makes the story is not only about the flamboyantly charming, pleasure-addicted, death-driven title character, we see all too clearly the man who created him, but also about a world of dysfunctional people and the Lord of Misrule, who leads them through a very dark sensual night of the soul to come out the other end with some illuminating self-knowledge.
What director Dmitri Tcherniakov has done here is radical and revisionist, but also deeply respectful. Not a note of Mozart’s score or a word of da Ponte’s libretto has been changed, but somehow a whole new work emerges, one which is ironically closer to the soul of its composer than the version we’ve gotten used to over the years.
I find Tcherniakov’s retelling fascinating. Don Giovanni’s intentions are good, in essence. He reminds me of a Handel heroine, Alcina. They both enchant people, and are punished for it. Tcherniakov sets the drama in a family mansion, but not Don Giovanni’s: We are at the Commendatore’s, who is the top of the patriarchal chain and father of Donna Anna, Don Giovanni’s first illicit love interest. While preparing the staging, Tcherniakov noticed a fundamental divide between the title character and all the others he encounters, changes, and is later punished by.
“Scoundrels die as scoundrels live. He is on his own, and everybody else is together. And this is how I came up with the solution that everybody else was part of the same family.” --Tcherniakov
Bravo to director Tcherniakov for stripping away the centuries of ornamentation to show us the true portrait underneath.
Thank you so much for taking me to see the stunning Mozart opera, my darling opera professor!
It's Asian Nicole. Don Giovanni is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It is based on the legends of Don Juan, a fictional libertine and seducer. It was premiered by the Prague Italian opera at the Estates Theatre on October 29, 1787. Da Ponte's libretto was billed, like many of its time, as dramma giocoso, a term that denotes a mixing of serious and comic action. Mozart entered the work into his catalogue as an opera buffa. Although sometimes classified as comic, it blends comedy, melodrama and supernatural elements.
You have never seen anything in your life quite like the production of Don Giovanni, Directed by Dmitri Tcherniakov, Conducted by Michael Hofstetter which the Canadian Opera Company is operating this opera from January 24 to February 21. Last night, I was so glad that my opera professor invited me to join with him to see the wonderful opera which I longed for at the Four Seasons Centre, downtown, Toronto.
In the opera Don Giovanni, three women fall in love with the same womanizer.
Zerlina is a young woman who becomes mesmerized by the older man who fearlessly takes what he wants. Donna Anna, Zerlina’s mother, also succumbs to his advances, which threaten both women’s engagements to marry others. Donna Elvira is an ex-conquest of the cad who wants to give him one last chance.
So....what is the attraction to this bad boy?
Zerlina says “he is a charismatic man. It’s not that he is handsome, it is that he has an air about him that’s so different from anything I’ve seen before.”
“Don Giovanni is my drug,” explains Zerlina. “I lost my balance when I met him. We all yearn for something deeper, to be with someone who makes you feel so special.”
Her poor boyfriend, “who’ll do for now,” doesn’t stand a chance against this towering presence, she adds.
For Donna Anna, “He’s kind of dishevelled, not subtle. But there is something magnetic, compelling about him,” Archibald says.
“My take is that he’s a little of bit under the whim of his own charisma.”
She says. “The sex is part of it, free love. He thinks, ‘I can love you and love her too.’ That’s kind of the idea.”
Meanwhile, Donna Elvira watches the action play out with resignation.
“Yes, I do love the man, he has a magnetic personality. He’s really good at doing the right thing at the right time, knowing what you need to hear.
“What is interesting is watching what happens when you realize that you are not special. He does it to everybody. You’re made to look like a fool.”
Hmmmm....from all of above, needless to say what a scoundrel Don Giovanni is.
Putting the opera into a contemporary time makes the story is not only about the flamboyantly charming, pleasure-addicted, death-driven title character, we see all too clearly the man who created him, but also about a world of dysfunctional people and the Lord of Misrule, who leads them through a very dark sensual night of the soul to come out the other end with some illuminating self-knowledge.
What director Dmitri Tcherniakov has done here is radical and revisionist, but also deeply respectful. Not a note of Mozart’s score or a word of da Ponte’s libretto has been changed, but somehow a whole new work emerges, one which is ironically closer to the soul of its composer than the version we’ve gotten used to over the years.
I find Tcherniakov’s retelling fascinating. Don Giovanni’s intentions are good, in essence. He reminds me of a Handel heroine, Alcina. They both enchant people, and are punished for it. Tcherniakov sets the drama in a family mansion, but not Don Giovanni’s: We are at the Commendatore’s, who is the top of the patriarchal chain and father of Donna Anna, Don Giovanni’s first illicit love interest. While preparing the staging, Tcherniakov noticed a fundamental divide between the title character and all the others he encounters, changes, and is later punished by.
“Scoundrels die as scoundrels live. He is on his own, and everybody else is together. And this is how I came up with the solution that everybody else was part of the same family.” --Tcherniakov
Bravo to director Tcherniakov for stripping away the centuries of ornamentation to show us the true portrait underneath.
Thank you so much for taking me to see the stunning Mozart opera, my darling opera professor!
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