The fine Swedish baritone Pēters Matei will play the title role. He will have brilliant partners: sopranos Federica Lombardi (Donna Anna), Ana Maria Martinez (Donna Elvira) and Jina Fan (Cerlina), tenor Ben Bliss (Don Ottavio) and bass-baritones Adam Plachetka (Leporello), Alfred Walker (Mazeto) and Alexander Tsimbalyuk (commander).
Ar Don Juan conductor Natalija Stucmanes, who is the musical director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and the principal guest conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra, makes her debut at the Metropolitan Opera. She herself is known as a great singer (contralto).
This performance by director Ivo van Hove was seen for the first time in 2019 at the Paris Opera. Ivo van Hove is one of the leaders of drama and music theater, his view of classical works is always sharp and contemporary. “Don Juan the challenge is that it is a very long opera. The first act is as sharp as a knife, while the second almost repeats what we have already seen, but develops it more deeply, and here it becomes even more difficult – the opera has funny the parts that even great directors fail, they disappear there. If you start making a comedy, nothing happens, then it’s a story about nothing. You have to deepen the emotions, instead of playing something light or funny, which is not really what it is anyway,” says Ivo van Hove. The director considers the title character of the opera immoral. He is opportunistic, does not form deep relationships with anyone, he no empathy for others Don Juan could even be called a sociopath.
“When I studied the score and text, I discovered that the opera speaks to the power structures in our society: we meet Don Juan, his servant Leporello, the peasant community. Don Juan seduces Mazetto’s bride, Cerline, promising her a fabulous, well-secured future. He also sexually and emotionally dominates Donna Elvira. These different power structures are about control and the subordinates are harmed. Don Juan is at the top and the others resist him,” adds the director. “Lorenzo da Ponte’s libretto is very well written, all the characters are complex, multifaceted personalities. They are similar to the characters created by Ingmar Bergman – they are neither good nor bad, just human, it is almost like a description of our era,” emphasizes Ivo van Hove .
“The action of the productions we create never takes place in a specific time. We always try to create a show that would have looked modern ten years ago and which would be modern ten years from now. It is also an attempt to create universal dramas in costumes and stage design,” says the director, who always works together with set designer Jan Versweiveld and costume designer Anna D’Heis. “What you see on stage at the opera Don Juan, is a street with five buildings. We are on the street, outside, it is social life. We don’t know what goes on inside the houses. The platform with the buildings rotates slowly, and the street becomes similar to a prison and a closed room,” the director describes the scenography of the show.
More conversation with Ivo van Hove about Don Juan production is readable here.
2023-05-17 18:30:41
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