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:

Keith McDonnell - 22 August 2011

Don Giovanni is a notoriously difficult opera to stage, and out of the dozen or so stagings I’ve seen only one has come close to getting to the heart of this deeply disturbing work, namely Deborah Warner’s modern dress production for Glyndebourne in the ‘90s. Mozart and da Ponte’s ‘dramma giocoso’ presents numerous difficulties to any would-be director as it is often nigh impossible to blend the serious elements with the comic – some may argue that there’s no real comedy in it at all given that the opera opens with an attempted rape and murder, and concludes with the main character being dragged down to hell.

It’s not hard to see why Opera Up Close wanted to get their teeth into this strange and multi-faceted work, but like so many before them their staging is deeply flawed and ultimately fails to do justice to the original. In any case what is presented at The Soho Theatre is very much an adaptation of Mozart an...

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Latest User Review

Jane - 4 September 2011:

Very clever updating of characters - eg the rape victim feeling it was her fault, the students being a different "class" as anti-capitalists etc. Consistently challenging - well done to all! ...

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