Sex, Murder, and Mayhem (That's Mozart?!)

The University of Illinois School of Music's opera program will be presenting Don Giovanni at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts this weekend, Nov. 11-14. Sung in the original Italian (with English supertitles), the production has every appearance of living up to the high artistic standards that this opera demands.

The opera, set in 17th century Seville, revolves around the dissipated lifestyle of the roguish anti-hero from which the work takes its name, a charismatic and lascivious aristocrat who refuses to reform and ultimately pays the price for his needleless moral compass. Mozart and da Ponte's version of the Don Juan legend also incorporates another popular tale from the time, The Stone Guest. Here, it is the statue of the Commendatore, who was killed at the outset of the opera in a duel with Don Giovanni (following his attempt to seduce and rape the Commendatore's daughter, Donna Anna, who swears revenge on her father's killer, and who declares that she will not marry her fiance, Don Ottavio, until she has achieved it), who signals Don Giovanni's ultimate downfall. Much of the comic relief is provided by Don Giovanni's servant, Leporello, who is often called upon to help distract people (for example, the justifiably angry, jilted Donna Elvira, whom Don Giovanni attempts to pick up without realizing that he already has, and who has been traveling in order to track him down) while Don Giovanni himself makes an escape.

The delightfully whimsical scenery for the present production-with its sweeping swirls of purple, black and white that integrate the set into one main entity, and imaginative, and some rather graphic, sculpted set pieces-complements the alternately playful, sensuous and fantastic elements of the opera. Scenic designer Aaron Benson commented that since the opera itself is so dynamic, the directors were looking for an equally dynamic set. "I had to change my set design (from the original plans) to reflect what happens during the opera and to imbue it with Don Giovanni's sexuality," Benson remarked. "The whole stage is his bedroom."

Likewise, the period costumes, designed by Andrea M. Gross, inspired by her research on Goya's earlier paintings, are employed to highlight and reinforce aspects of the characters' personalities, from the conservatively attired Don Ottavio and his vengeance-bent fiancee Donna Anna, to the flirtatious Zerlina and the passionate, but inhibited Donna Elvira.

About the latter, Gross said that "Elvira and Giovanni are actually the best match for each other; it's really a shame that they don't end up together at the end. She has a lot of fire that she represses, and I tried to make that come through in her costume."

Of course, the unbilled star of the opera is the music itself; Mozart built into the veneer of his spirited musical setting a remarkable amount of dramatic tension and vibrant emotional impact. The opera's conductor, Eduardo Diazmuñoz, said that his main aim in preparing the musical component of the show was to be as loyal as possible to Mozart's delicately nuanced and psychologically compelling musical setting. "It is very challenging, because Mozart sounds easy, but is not. He is one of the most difficult composers to be loyal to, because he is pristine, but tragic."

Diazmuñoz also reflected on the irrepressibly Mozartian decision to end the opera on a light note, rather than with the absolute gravity of the scene in which the main character is literally dragged down to hell. He remarked that if it had been another composer's opera, "When Don Giovanni goes to hell, that would have been the end of it; the rake was punished, forget about it. Right after that, everybody is muted. But then Mozart ... turns it into a jolly ending ... after all that tragedy, he has this smile at the very end." Diazmu§oz later added that "only Mozart could put fire and water together like that."

"(Don Giovanni) has all the elements that an opera requires for it to be a great opera," Diazmu§oz observed. "You have passion, you have love, lust, revenge, hatred, sweetness, sourness, delight, tragedy, humor-sometimes nasty humor, sometimes very subtle-you have jealousy, sorrow, and so on, so that you have a complete opera." Stage director Jacque Trussel has helped to enhance the rich musical content with equally effective action onstage.


Although the rather explicit sexual content and depictions of violence in the opera generally exclude it from being considered "wholesome fun for the whole family," Don Giovanni is entirely deserving of its reputation as one of-if not the-greatest operas ever written. This opera has enough dramatic intrigue to keep one on one's toes, without taking itself so seriously that it forgets to brighten even the darkest scenes with comic relief, and just about anybody who attends one of these upcoming performances should be in for a treat.


Don Giovanni is playing at Krannert Center's Tryon Festival Theatre Thursday-Saturday, Nov. 11-13 at 7:30 p.m., and Sunday, Nov. 14 at 3 p.m. Tickets are available through the Krannert Center Web site, http://www.kcpa.uiuc.edu/tickets, by telephone (1-800-KCPATIX or 217-333-6280), fax (217-244-SHOW), e-mail (kran-tix@uiuc.edu), or in person at the Krannert Center ticket office (open 10 a.m.-6 p.m. daily).

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Originally Published Nov 11, 2004, Buzz Weekly (Champaign-Urbana, Illinois)
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