Organization

Singer

Baritone

Christopher Maltman

Don Giovanni

Bass

Anatoli Kotscherga

Commendatore

Soprano

Annette Dasch

Donna Anna

Tenor

Matthew Polenzani

Don Ottavio

Dorothea Röschmann

Donna Elvira

Erwin Schrott

Leporello

Ekaterina Siurina

Zerlina

Alex Esposito

Masetto

Conductor

Bertrand de Billy

Stage director

Claus Guth

Costume designer

Christian Schmidt

Set designer

Christian Schmidleithner

Lighting designer

Olaf Winter

Dramaturge

Ronny Dietrich

Choreographer

Ramses Sigl

Chorus master

Thomas Lang

Anatoly Kocherga

Svetlana Doneva

Pavol Breslik

Salzburger Festspiele

Wiener Staatsoper

Italian

Salzburg

Austria

Haus für Mozart

"A thriller in real time as the fantasy of a moribund", wrote the Rondo magazine about this production from Claus Guth's Salzburg Mozart/Da Ponte cycle.

The magazine Opernwelt reported: "Guth said beforehand that he wanted to show a study about the human fear of death. He succeeds. Impressively and consistently. The forest is brilliant as a metaphor for the protagonists' wandering around. Don Giovanni also sees the forest for the trees. He's also wounded... That's no longer a hero who can easily wrap women around his finger. That's a fallen man in life. Someone who's afraid of the end. With everyone minute more."

Prague 1787: With a world premiere, Mozart wants to build on the huge success of the "Marriage of Figaro", which he reaped here the previous year. For the libretto, Mozart turned to the proven Figaro librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte. One chooses a well-known Spanish subject that was brought to the stage at the beginning of the year by the Italian composer Giuseppe Gazzaniga and his lyricist Giovanni Bertati in Venice: "Don Giovanni oder Der Steinerne Gast", the story of the egomaniacal seducer who denies morality, even invites death to him and is finally severely punished for his actions. Da Ponte and Mozart take over the course of action and expand it with completely new things.

The celebrated premiere took place in Prague at the end of October 1787. The press says: "Connoisseurs and musicians say that nothing like it has ever been performed in Prague. Herr Mozart conducted himself, and when he entered the orchestra he was cheered three times, which also happened when he left the orchestra." . But the work failed the following year with conservative Viennese audiences: "Don Giovanni" was only performed fifteen times during Mozart's lifetime.
Mozart and Da Ponte moved away from the operatic conventions of their time with numerous innovations: the title role is scored for a bass and not, as was usual, for a tenor part. Instead of the usual four acts, there are only two of unusual length. The arias and ensemble scenes become the starting and junction points of the action and are therefore no longer mere reflections of the preceding recitatives. But what is actually new about "Don Giovanni" is the ambiguity, which makes it impossible to classify the opera into one genre: tragedy and comedy, suffering and wit run through the entire work - the boundaries between serious and cheerful blur as well as the boundaries between the social classes. And who knows: maybe Mozart and his librettist Da Ponte will let Don Giovanni's descent into hell, of the representatives of the nobility, finally also drive the whole feudal age to hell. According to the "Figaro" this assumption is obvious.

Don Giovanni Mozart

German

English

Approved

In the religious drama El Burlador de Sevilla y Convidado de Piedra by Tirso de Molina, the figure of Don Juan first walked the stage in 1613 – however, his origins are uncertain: while some view him as a myth originating in the Spanish folk tradition, other sources cite a real-life model, Don Juan Tenorio from Seville, a careless seducer and man of pleasure from the era of Don Pedro the Cruel, who murdered the governor of Seville and was then lured into a monastery and secretly executed by the monks. Thereafter, a rumor was spread that the statue on the grave of the murdered man had come alive and punished the murderer. For the longest time, the blackguard was justly condemned to hell, to the audiences' delight and satisfaction, but Mozart gave him a new dimension in his opera. Here, the evildoer almost becomes a sympathetic figure, an idea that later poets and thinkers elaborated further. Of course, Mozart would not be Mozart if he had not discovered a spark of godliness even in this being, and thus, the question remains: is Mozart's Don Giovanni perhaps not a myth, not a primal force, similar to Eros or Dionysus? Is he merely a human being like the rest of us, aware of his finite existence on earth, and merely wanting to make the most of his brief life span?

Don Giovanni by Mozart, From (2008/2008), Directed by Claus Guth,, Conductor Bertrand de Billy, Haus für Mozart, Salzburg, Austria

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