“He’s a proper Don Juan” – a man who is called that in held to be a “womanizer”, a seducer whom one views with suspicion but whom nevertheless nobody can resist. In Spain in the Middle Ages his bad reputation began as a libertine and ruthless chaser of women, and since being perpetuated in Tirso de Molina’s “Don Juan or the Seducer of Seville and the Stone Guest” this figure of fiction has journeyed much in the world of literature over the years. Don Juan became a legend releasing erotic fantasy and at the same time marshalling prudes against himself, not so much on grounds of his sexual enormities as out of envy for his implicit liberty. He has thoughts only for unlimited enjoyment and fears the judgment neither of earthly nor of heavenly jurisdiction.

Eros and Vanitas are also the existential themes broached by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) and his librettist Lorenzo da Ponte in their opera “Don Giovanni”. Their bonvivant shows unabashed agility in intruding into the bedroom of beautiful Donna Anna, killing her father the Commendatore in the heat of the moment, deceiving his wife Donna Elvira and seducing Zerlina the peasant girl. But it is only when the stone statue of the Commendatore challenges him and he refuses to repent of his sins that a ticket to Hell is assured for this Don Giovanni. A defiant “No!” is his last word, before stage thunder and smoke accompany his descent to the nether world as retribution for his obduracy and his impenitence; and those who apparently are pleased at this turn of events he leaves behind to return to the emptiness and boredom of the everyday humdrum lives they had previously led.

Karoline Gruber, who successfully introduced herself to Deutsche Oper am Rhein with the French baroque opera “Platée” by Jean-Philippe Rameau, has examined the phenomenon of Don Juan. Her staging has been realized as a joint production with the Nikikai Opera Foundation of Tokyo, was already shown at the end of the 2011/12 season in Duisburg and is now to have its première in Düsseldorf Opernhaus also.


In cooperation with the Tokyo Nikikai Opera Foundation
 
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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Don Giovanni

Dramma giocoso in two acts, KV 527
Libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte
Prague version

 
In Italian with German surtitles
 

Musikalische Leitung Friedemann Layer
Inszenierung Karoline Gruber
Bühne Roy Spahn
Kostüme Mechthild Seipel
Chorleitung Gerhard Michalski
Licht Franz-Xaver Schaffer
Dramaturgie Alexander Meier-Dörzenbach
 
Don Giovanni Laimonas Pautienius
Donna Anna Liana Aleksanyan
Don Ottavio Jussi Myllys
Komtur Hans-Peter König
Donna Elvira Brigitta Kele
Leporello Günes Gürle
Masetto Torben Jürgens
Zerlina Alma Sadé
Chor Chor der Deutschen Oper am Rhein
Orchester Düsseldorfer Symphoniker