DON GIOVANNI by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 29 at 6.00pm
Screening Live in HD at Theatr Mwldan, Cardigan via satellite from New York
STARRING MARIUSZ KWIECIEN AS THE GREAT SEDUCER
CONDUCTED BY FABIO LUISI
A NEW PRODUCTION BY MICHAEL GRANDAGE
Running time: Approximately 3 hours and 27 minutes, including one intermission
Host: Renée Fleming
Pre show talk with Idris Rees at 5.30pm
Met Principal Conductor Fabio Luisi conducts a new production of Mozart’s classic opera of lust, heartbreak, and revenge, with Mariusz Kwiecien in his first Met performances of the iconic title role. This screening comes live in HD to Theatr Mwldan, Cardigan, via satellite from New York at 6pm on Saturday 29th October.
It was back in 1630 that Don Juan first swaggered into the public consciousness. Spanish dramatist Tirso de Molina’s play El Burlador de Sevilla y Convidado de Piedra is considered the first written account of the story of the legendary lothario. Little could the author have known that his creation would lead to a long line of adaptations by such diverse literary figures as Molière, Byron, Pushkin, Baudelaire, George Bernard Shaw, and José Saramago. (Not to mention movie versions featuring everyone from Errol Flynn to Johnny Depp.)
But the definitive interpretation of Molina’s “trickster of Seville” was to be a musical one: Mozart and Da Ponte’s Don Giovanni, first heard in Prague in 1787. The opera arrives at the Met this season in a new production directed by Michael Grandage and conducted by Music Director James Levine, with baritone Mariusz Kwiecien in the title role. At the core of Grandage’s approach to the piece is the complex nature of its eponymous anti-hero—a character that has been portrayed as both the image of youthful vigor and as a villainous, decadent
criminal.
“Don Giovanni has a charismatic lust for life, but he’s not just some serial seducer—he’s a dark, complex individual,” Grandage says. “The starting point of Don Giovanni is a death, and the brilliance of the opera is that Mozart then takes us to a piece about life. There’s something quite Shakespearean about it: a serious subject that has many opportunities for comedy, for lightness of touch, for all sorts of layers in the portrayal of the characters.”
Tony Award-winning director Grandage, who makes his Met debut with this production, has won critical and public acclaim as the Artistic Director of London’s Donmar Warehouse, where his tenure comes to an end this season. His recent work there includes stagings of Hamlet with Jude Law and King Lear with Derek Jacobi, both of which were also seen in New York, as well as John Logan’s Red, about the painter Mark Rothko, which won Grandage a Tony Award for its 2010 Broadway run.
The production stars an international cast of acclaimed Mozart singers, including Marina Rebeka as Donna Anna, Mojca Erdmann as the innocent peasant girl Zerlina, Barbara Frittoli as the fiery Donna Elvira, Ramón Vargas as Don Ottavio, Luca Pisaroni as Giovanni’s manservant Leporello, Joshua Bloom as Masetto, and Štefan Kocán as the vengeful Commendatore.
Tickets are £18 (£16) and are available to book now from Theatr Mwldan’s Box Office, online at www.mwldan.co.uk or via Smartphones mwldan.ticketsolve.com/mobile
