Don Giovanni – Wiener Staatsoper

The simultaneity of elements of farce, comic and tragic opera, low and high style, and symphonic and sacred music leads into new territory that crosses borders.

Giovanni travels between all these languages. He himself has no music of his own, as he makes himself the projection screen of the women he desires: Donna Anna, brought up in strict paternal care, who seeks adventure in him; Donna Elvira, escaped from all ties, who hope for emotional stability; the lower-class girl Zerlina, who dreams of social advancement in his arms. The sequence of scenes in the opera is bracketed by Giovanni’s murder of Donna Anna’s father and his return as the dead. In the opera, he wants to save Don Giovanni from eternal damnation by making him repent of his deeds – which he refuses to do. So it remains questionable who is the loser in this duel, for Giovanni’s intellectual defiance is unbroken.