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May. 1st, 2008 01:57 pmMay. Clearly more dangerous than you thought.
May. 1st, 2008
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May. 1st, 2008 11:32 pmI borrowed the Don Giovanni dvd from my father's Salzburg Mozart opera box set & thought I'd watch maybe one act today and the other tomorrow, and then sat glued to the computer for three hours straight with a brief toothbrush break between acts 1 & 2.
I can't really remember what my initial reaction had been, maybe a bit different because I barely knew the opera then, but, holy shit. Martin Kušej is such a brilliant director and it's once again amazing to see what he can do with his material; I'd just wish his messages weren't always so depressing, because this says some really ugly things about the relationship between men and women. It's a bit different in the second act where he has less leeway with the supernatural element, but in the first act he doesn't even have to change anything -- merely strip away the male view that tends to romanticise/downplay the consequences of Don Giovanni's behaviour. Act 1 is Don Giovanni seen from the female perspective, and it's not pretty. To state the obvious, this isn't about love, the point is that love is something Don Giovanni incapable of, but there's nothing even remotely light or playful to distract from the ugliness; it's brutal and predatory. Women are meat. Leporello's aria about Don Giovanni's conquests is chilling especially with the rope-skipping girl in the white dress at Sua passion predominante/È la giovin principiante. Zerlina, who's willing to let herself be beaten up to pacify Masetto (who casually slaps her across the face before that), is (at least that's pretty strongly implied) raped at the end of act 1 and spends act 2 bruised and bloody. La povera ragazza/È pazza, amici miei;/Lasciatemi con lei,/Forse si calmerà. is not a line (or four lines) from an 220 years old opera, it's a man dismissing a woman's grievance by saying she's over-emotional, overreacting, etc., and it's scary how easily that can be brought into the present.
And it's not just Don Giovanni, none of the men are immune to this. Masetto does seem to reconsider his behaviour a bit after he himself gets beaten up in act 2, while Don Ottavio, who is the one genuinely nice guy in act 1 picks up a bit of Don Giovanni's attitude along with his sword when he vows to avenge the murder of Donna Anna's father and has Zerlina, Elvira and Masetto all flinching away from the sudden violence. When Donna Anna refuses to marry him he storms across the stage (how dare she, a woman, refuse him), stops very, very short of making the argument violent only at her 'Crudele?' and spends most of her aria almost literally sitting on his hands to avoid doing that, maybe horrified at himself. His willingness to wait for a year like she demands shows at least that he's a bit more aware and able to respect her wishes.
It's opera, it's Salzburger Festspiele, meaning that it's so elitist that it's pointless to think it'll change anything, but I should think that would have made at least some men in the audience uncomfortable.
This is a Don Giovanni it's almost impossible to sympathise with even in the end; it's not that he refuses to repent, he literally can't. He's incapable of seeing an alternative, or feeling regret. Io mi voglio divertir, that's all it comes down to, and Kušej brutally emphasises the cruelty, as well as the emptiness and meaninglessness of that.
I can't really remember what my initial reaction had been, maybe a bit different because I barely knew the opera then, but, holy shit. Martin Kušej is such a brilliant director and it's once again amazing to see what he can do with his material; I'd just wish his messages weren't always so depressing, because this says some really ugly things about the relationship between men and women. It's a bit different in the second act where he has less leeway with the supernatural element, but in the first act he doesn't even have to change anything -- merely strip away the male view that tends to romanticise/downplay the consequences of Don Giovanni's behaviour. Act 1 is Don Giovanni seen from the female perspective, and it's not pretty. To state the obvious, this isn't about love, the point is that love is something Don Giovanni incapable of, but there's nothing even remotely light or playful to distract from the ugliness; it's brutal and predatory. Women are meat. Leporello's aria about Don Giovanni's conquests is chilling especially with the rope-skipping girl in the white dress at Sua passion predominante/È la giovin principiante. Zerlina, who's willing to let herself be beaten up to pacify Masetto (who casually slaps her across the face before that), is (at least that's pretty strongly implied) raped at the end of act 1 and spends act 2 bruised and bloody. La povera ragazza/È pazza, amici miei;/Lasciatemi con lei,/Forse si calmerà. is not a line (or four lines) from an 220 years old opera, it's a man dismissing a woman's grievance by saying she's over-emotional, overreacting, etc., and it's scary how easily that can be brought into the present.
And it's not just Don Giovanni, none of the men are immune to this. Masetto does seem to reconsider his behaviour a bit after he himself gets beaten up in act 2, while Don Ottavio, who is the one genuinely nice guy in act 1 picks up a bit of Don Giovanni's attitude along with his sword when he vows to avenge the murder of Donna Anna's father and has Zerlina, Elvira and Masetto all flinching away from the sudden violence. When Donna Anna refuses to marry him he storms across the stage (how dare she, a woman, refuse him), stops very, very short of making the argument violent only at her 'Crudele?' and spends most of her aria almost literally sitting on his hands to avoid doing that, maybe horrified at himself. His willingness to wait for a year like she demands shows at least that he's a bit more aware and able to respect her wishes.
It's opera, it's Salzburger Festspiele, meaning that it's so elitist that it's pointless to think it'll change anything, but I should think that would have made at least some men in the audience uncomfortable.
This is a Don Giovanni it's almost impossible to sympathise with even in the end; it's not that he refuses to repent, he literally can't. He's incapable of seeing an alternative, or feeling regret. Io mi voglio divertir, that's all it comes down to, and Kušej brutally emphasises the cruelty, as well as the emptiness and meaninglessness of that.