Yet even the great US musicologist Paul Henry Lang disagrees. “The spectator is so completely enveloped in the magic of love,” he wrote in 1941, “mirrored to him from all sides, that the natural measure he usually follows in human relationships vanishes, together with all scruples he might entertain toward the diabolical greatness of the hero.”
As so often with Mozart, the female characters get specially sympathetic and insightful treatment. Donna Anna, whose father the Commendatore (Commander) is killed in a duel in the opera's opening scene, gets some superb music, as does the lonely and tragic Donna Elvira. Zerlina, Masetto's fiancee, is a lighter role, and she is often played as an intelligent and experienced woman, comparable to Susanna in Figaro, despite her humble social status. The men, by contrast, especially Anna's fiancee Ottavio, are often seen as subject to mere knee-jerk reactions, though there's room for other points of view here as well.
“The opera's recitatives will be in Mandarin,” director Tseng said. “This will allow audiences to understand the story better. It's a buffa opera anyway, with comic and serious business mixed, so understanding the plot is important. Only the arias, duets and ensembles will be sung in the original Italian, with Chinese subtitles displayed.”
“Mozart's music is so great,” he continued. “All the drama's meaning is encoded in it. I even feel that performing it is like unraveling the Da Vinci code in some strange way!”
“The setting will be 17th-century, as it was intended to be. There have been too many avant-garde productions that sacrificed the music to supposed originality. But the music is the heart, the very spirit, of the work, and you must respect that above all else. The famous baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau once said that there were avant-garde stage directors who devised crazy productions but who didn't know a note of the music. We're certainly not going to be like that!”
Performance Notes:
What: Mozart's Don Giovanni
Where: Metropolitan Hall (城市舞台), 25 Bade Road Sec 3, Taipei (台北市八德路三段25號)
When: Tonight at 7.30pm and Sunday at 2.30pm
Tickets: From NT$400 to NT$1,200.
Contact: (02) 3393-9888 for reservations.
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