Yesterday, I revisited Mozart’s Don Giovanni directed by Michael Grandage at the Metropolitan Opera. The MET has the best opera video productions imaginable. It feels as though a separate run was made just for filming, as if a cameraman is running around on stage, but in reality, it’s just excellent equipment and direction of the video version. A camera over the orchestra glides on tracks, the sound is crystal clear—reverberation? Hard to tell because there’s sporadic applause, close-ups from various angles, excellent lighting.
One of my favorite operas. A perceptive critic once noted that in Don Giovanni, everyone is miserable except for Don Giovanni himself. “He who adores one, offends the others.” A mix of genres, there’s something to laugh at, and something to ponder. Overall, highly recommended.
By the way. The librettist, Lorenzo Da Ponte, was a real-life Don Giovanni, and Casanova was his close friend and helped Lorenzo. So they literally wrote from their own lives 🙂 For the audience of that time, there surely were many recognizable characters and references. Lorenzo was expelled from Venice and the church because he was a lady’s man and led a rather unchurchly lifestyle) Mozart understood him quite well too. Incidentally, Lorenzo Da Ponte eventually emigrated to the USA, organized the first performance of the opera “Don Giovanni” in America, and is buried in Brooklyn.
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Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev. 