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Don Giovanni

Composer

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Librettist

Lorenzo da Ponte

Venue and Dates

Gran Teatre del Liceu, Barcelona

22, 25, 27, 30 July 2008

Conductor

Friedrich Haider

Production

Director: Calixto Bieito

Sets: Alfons Flores

Costumes: Mercé Paloma

Lighting: Alan Burrett

Performers

Don Giovanni: Simon Keenlyside

Donna Anna: Angeles Blancas

Don Ottavio: Christoph Strehl

Donna Elvira: Véronique Gens

Commendatore: Günther Groissböck

Leporello: Kyle Ketelsen

Masetto: David Menéndez

Zerlina: Juanita Lascarro

Notes

Joint production with English National Opera and Staatsoper Hannover

From the Liceu website:

http://www.liceubarcelona.com/operes/presentacio.asp?i=264&a=437

Calixto Bieito's Don Giovanni lives in a perpetual stupor brought on by drink, sex and drugs, oblivious of any ethical barrier that could prevent him from sacrificing his own safety, and that of others, to this frenzy of the senses. These two themes -the protagonist's amorality and the self-destruction towards which his conduct drives him- are pivotal to Mozart's Don Giovanni. By shifting the action from 18th century Seville to present-day Barcelona and turning the aristocratic Don Giovanni into a man on the fringes of society, Bieito seeks to conjure up images that will cause an impact on his audience by revealing the full stark horror of his lifestyle, without the mitigating or distancing effect of 18th century costumes and gallantries.
Bieito's Don Giovanni is a man whose physical magnetism enables him to enlist the complicity of his gang of cronies; a man who breaks the rules, not in order to conquer his chosen sexual victims, but out of the sheer pleasure of destructive transgression; a man who burns out his life almost without realizing it, whose awareness is numbed by a state of stupor he cannot control, who seeks new sensations in order to escape, not to assert himself..

 

Rehearsal Photos

 

 

 

 

 

Photo Gallery

All photos by Antoni Bofill

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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