Don Giovanni

Synopsis

Written shortly after The Marriage of Figaro. Based on the famous legend of Don Juan the master seducer from whom no woman can be considered safe. Don Giovanni pursues, seduces, rapes and murders and in the climax is pulled to hell by a stone statue of one of his victims come to life - he remains unrepentant. His servant Leporello witnesses all his masters wrongs. There is also a rarely performed opera of the same name (and story) by Giuseppe Gazzaniga which was first performed in 1786, eight months before Mozart's version.

Our Review:

29 June 2010

Nicholas Garrett’s Don Giovanni is a lithe, wiry lothario who infects the stage like love’s disease. In a vain attempt to avoid being contaminated by his squalid presence, the gentlemen take snuff and the ladies pop scented sweeties. To no avail, however: one a-tishoo and they all fall down.

Stephen Barlow’s thoughtful production makes sense of the Don’s excesses by placing him in Victorian England, complete with bobby on the beat and a Red Lion pub. Barlow depicts a prurient society where sexual repression is so powerful that once passions do break the surface they erupt with ferocity and ruthlessness – hence the Don’s perverted attitude to women.

The self-absorption of this anti-hero is strikingly portrayed in the gallery of paintings – all of the man himself, all identical – that line his world. At the opera’s climax these portraits are cleverly subverted by Barlow and his designer, Yannis Thavolis, in a psycholog...

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