Don Giovanni

Introduction

Don Giovanni is an inexhaustible, multifaceted masterpiece: every age feels at home in it, an eternal provocation, pure chilling sensuality, pulsing sexuality. It presents living patterns of desire as the metaphysical conflict of body and spirit, as a kind of medieval natural machismo and enlightened, emancipated love, as the contrast between possible and impossible fulfilment in love, or even as a thought construction based on the opposition of worldly and otherworldly “truth,” or of what is according to nature and what contradicts it. Mozart speaks much more of the demonic nature of desire, which at times uplifts, at other times drains: a good example is Donna Elvira’s paradoxical helplessness in the face of her desire, which is both redeeming and to be destroyed, but also Don Giovanni’s self-indulgent rhetoric and his many permanently self-endangering provocations, probing the boundaries of himself. Don Giovanni is also a liberating libertine: in his view, existence makes no sense without extreme emotions, and a memorable destruction is the proof of a full existence.

Mozart’s opera has a marvellous structure; besides Kierkegaard or Géza Fodor, perhaps it was Géza Peskó who described it most originally when he explored the “kaleidoscopic” use of tonalities: “The music of Don Giovanni remains within a distance of seven key signatures. Within this distance lies the boundary of earthly modulations; beyond it they lose their meaning. Touching the distance of eight key signatures in fact signals the end of the adventures and experiences of the living, opening the gate to the other world.” The essence of the opera is precisely this opening of gates: through the vision of lived hell and heaven, to peek into the justice of the hell and/or heaven that can be intuited in eternity.

Zoltán Csehy

The opera of all operas

The opera of all operas – following a well-founded, even cemented cliché, we often refer to Don Giovanni this way. Yet the work’s legendarium is so sprawling and its cultural background so immense that at times we forget its most obvious feature: that Don Giovanni is an opera. And what’s more, a comic opera, since the designation dramma giocoso in its own age did not mean some kind of double-natured operatic type but straightforward comic operas. This fact, of course, does not render impossible – nor futile – the enlargement of Don Giovanni into a world drama, a romantically broadened vision, by a great conductor or director; after all, Wilhelm Furtwängler’s filmed Salzburg performance of 1954 accomplished precisely such a miracle. But the default Don Giovanni (if we can even speak of such a thing!) is a comic opera, and as such it poses challenges for its performers that extend far beyond the purely vocal.

For a comic opera must appear entirely effortless and self-evident in every moment on stage, and only truly successful performances can conjure this illusion. “Traditional” operatic clowning can prove just as disappointing here as the careless delivery of recitatives. For whether Don Giovanni (or practically any other comic opera) is sung in Italian or Hungarian, it is the lively drive and natural rhythm of the recitatives that can create the all-important underlying impression that both the ripostes and counter-ripostes – and through them, the entire story – are being born right before the audience’s eyes.

Another great and singular difficulty in any performance of Don Giovanni is that it must make vivid the extraordinary stature and masculine allure of the title character. Many significant operatic roles can be solved without a commanding personality and sex appeal, but in the case of Don Giovanni’s figure, even the most radical Regietheater practice most often finds indispensable the presence of a stage “big beast.” It is not necessary for the performer to bring the entire legend and literary tradition of the role with him onto the stage, but even in our era, so conspicuously deficient in personalities, it remains a basic expectation from the audience that a captivating man should step forth in this role. The currently fashionable barihunks craze – the hype surrounding strikingly macho baritones (and bass-baritones and basses) – in principle favours the fulfilment of this expectation, although masculine bearing and a sculpted torso alone are far from a guarantee of a truly representative stage presence.

And finally, however much the legendary or, in a fortunate case, the currently appearing Don Giovanni may stand out from his environment, Mozart’s opera still demands perfectly attuned teamwork, sensitively wrought ensemble playing. Without this, for example, the Act I finale can turn messy and – shameful even to write it! – dull, while the sextet following the title character’s damnation may even appear downright superfluous. That is why a Don Giovanni performance can endure at most a weak Masetto without suffering serious damage, but any vulnerability in Zerlina or Don Ottavio tends to upset the delicate balance, which when achieved is nothing less than ideal.

Ferenc László

The director’s concept

Whenever I start to work on a production, I am faced with a question: “why should I stage it?” And I must find the answer. I have always adored the music of Don Giovanni, but I have never liked it on stage. I cannot identify with the “macho” Don Giovanni figure as it is often represented. It took a long time until I realised that real interest is in seeing eroticism, sex, and the chasing of women as a wish to stay alive. That is when you understand his obsession. If we look at the opera closely, we see that most of his adventures fail. Everything goes too fast; he gets from one situation into the next one far too quickly. Therefore, I became interested in examining someone who is aware that he must soon die.

His story is a compressed fight against death. At the beginning, he gets wounded in the duel with the Commendatore – thus, he has two hours left to live – which makes the concept obvious. He is like a dying animal crawling somewhere looking for a corner to die, and he finds nature. Another aspect I focused on was that in this state of mind he has no moral views or problems anymore. I wanted to find a place outside the rules of human morals. These two approaches resulted in the forest where the sun shines, where there is beauty, love, and sex. But the moment the sun sets, it becomes dark and a place of nightmares and fear with no light to show you the way. You are alone with your primordial fears.

The intertwining of reality and hallucinations is intentional. The events seen on stage are almost entirely the real ones. However, because of the pains he feels and the drugs he takes for them result in moments that are blurred. For example, when he sings his Canzonetta to the woman in the window, it is obvious that no one is there, it is all in his imagination. Similarly, the final scene with the Commendatore and Elvira also becomes a dreamlike, or rather nightmarish experience. Amidst all this chaos and the chasing of new desires, Leporello turns out to be Don Giovanni’s only true relationship, although the latter treats his servant horribly, and as a result, Leporello suffers a lot. Even so, they are like yin and yang, they need each other. Don Giovanni uses Leporello, but it is the same the other way around: Leporello could not experience all the things he wants without Don Giovanni. This becomes obvious through his Catalogue Aria.

Don Giovanni is not really interested in the personalities of women in a deeper sense. It is more like adoration on both sides. Donna Anna does not only see “Don Giovanni” in this man; he also becomes instrumental for her to find out that her fiancé, Don Ottavio is the wrong partner for her. In my opinion, their mad love scene is mainly about this. Next, there is Donna Elvira who has lost her orientation in life. Therefore, she constantly chases Don Giovanni to resolve her problem. Don Giovanni sees an extreme potential in Zerlina, and she probably sees the potential of another life in him as well. Thus, people do not really mean what they are to each other: they only represent desires they are searching for.

In 2008, we attempted to present the pure Viennese version, but a year later we made some changes and created a “mixed” performance. I do not really believe in pure versions anyway. For example, I regard Don Ottavio as an important figure, and I did not want to leave out any of his arias just because only one of them was sung in the original version. On the other hand, the rarely heard (Viennese) duet of Leporello and Zerlina goes in such a direction that is far from my interpretation, which made me finally leave the duet out. If, according to the concept, you want to show Don Giovanni’s demise in two hours, it would make no sense to have the final sextet afterwards. Consequently, I decided to omit it like they did in Vienna. It would simply not fit my production. The moment Don Giovanni dies, the show must be over as well.

Claus Guth

The conductor’s thoughts

I do not have, nor have I ever had, a predetermined intention that “my” interpretation of Don Giovanni would be one way or another. I consider such an approach quite egocentric. I would rather suggest that I attempt to create a performance that is as true as possible, but not definitive and indivertible, one that works best here and now, in this staging and with these soloists. The stage always influences the musical performance. I am also inspired a lot from the gestures, movements, and emotions I see, especially when it is I accompanying the secco recitatives from the orchestra pit on the keyboard, trying to weave in the mood and content of the scene that is taking place. Claus Guth’s staging supports my interpretation, which I sometimes take to the extreme, perfectly, and I try to put this across during the performances.

The present production has been presented in several versions. The first performance in Salzburg followed the Vienna version in its entirety. After the 2008 premiere, however, a mixture of the two well-known versions was created: Don Ottavio’s “Il mio tesoro...” aria, omitted from the Vienna version, was included again, and now the production includes both tenor arias composed by Mozart. It is fantastic music, but the retention of both arias raises questions from a musicology point of view: Mozart probably composed one of the most beautiful tenor arias in opera history, namely, “Dalla sua pace...” sung by Ottavio in the first act because the Ottavio of the Vienna premiere, Francesco Morella, was possibly afraid of the coloratura of the aria in B-flat major of the Prague version. Thus, Mozart erased and substituted it with another aria that is technically less demanding, although requiring extraordinary highs and lows. It is therefore obvious that the composer intended only one aria for Don Ottavio. Instead of the Leporello-Zerlina duet composed for the Vienna premiere, this production features an aria sung by Leporello from the Prague version (“Ah, pietà, signiori miei...”), and the final aria intended to nuance the character of Donna Elvira (“In quali eccessi... Mi tradì...”), which is one of the most poignant points of the opera for me, could not be left out, either. The most important issue of the Vienna version as a composition is, of course, the finale: the present production ends with the fall of Don Giovanni and is not followed by the final sextet.

Claus Guth makes unique use of this closure, leaving the personal stories of the protagonists unanswered, their future remains a mystery for the viewers. It is by no means clear by the end of the performance whether Don Giovanni’s damnation means a cure for the pains and problems. We have a protagonist, who refuses to live according to any social conventions and refuses to be influenced by man or God. The only thing that matters is to satisfy his own desires, and he is ready to do almost anything to achieve them. He is alone against the rest of the characters, who may be rich or poor, masters or servants, devout Christians or deceitful women, married or completely alone; the figure of Don Giovanni arouses them and their personalities, as well as their forms of existence that may be artificial and untrue, the secure or rather seemingly secure situations which they live in. It follows directly that they cannot remain indifferent to him. They are crazy about him, they adore and hate him, they fear from him, but they long for his proximity and, secretly, for the life he leads.

I see Don Giovanni as a kind of litmus paper, which, when dipped into the lives of each character, immediately reveals the true colour and pH of these characters through chemical interaction. All of this is in the name of the terribly painful differences between how everything is perceived depending on whether you are a gentlewoman or a peasant girl, or if you are a partner of a lady being made a pass at, briefly, as it always appears with Mozart: at different social levels. For me, Don Giovanni is a drama of the conflict between the monotonous everyday life and a life constantly lived with passion, between the conservative and the liberal view on life, a conflict that always remains a question unanswered. For me as a young adult, and indeed for a whole generation, it is a daily dilemma of how to conduct your life in the current state of the world and with our uncertain vision of the future.

Martin Rajna