When a lavish dinner party in the Commendatore’s mansion is interrupted by the sudden death of the host, the visitors and the servants find themselves mysteriously incapable of leaving the dining room. Soon everyone becomes infected with the Don Giovanni syndrome – an unlimited desire that magnifies the individual obsessions. The suddenly unbound force consumes the protagonists and compels them to abnormal mental states and compulsive behaviour. Where the necessity of self-preservation overrides prudence, the true human condition unbinds: Mozart’s Don Giovanni as a tragicomical thriller about our modern conditio humana.
The hyperrealistic aesthetics of the set in the first act (dining room) morphs into an allegorical image of the claustrophobic emotional state (cage) in the second. The costumes that initially define the social rank of the characters become in the course of action the symbols of their longtime suppressed phobias. The decay of the civilised elite leads to the triumph of the natural instincts and the prelapsarian state of animals. Don Giovanni doesn’t appear as an individual protagonist – he is embodied in the music and in the behaviour of the community on stage. The vocal part of Giovanni is shared between other protagonists on stage.
Director: Krystian Lada is a Polish stage director, librettist and cultural manager working internationally in the fields of opera and music theatre. He is the first recipient of the Mortier Next Generation Award and a founder of The Airport Society, a feminist and post-colonially informed platform for opera innovation.
Stage Designer: Didzis Jaunzems’s creative portfolio includes projects in the fields of architecture, urban planning, landscape intervention, as well as concert, dance and opera. The Annual Latvian Architecture Award in 2012 and 2015, and the title of the Young Architect of the Year 2019 came as a recognition of his ambitious approach to design.
Costume Designer: Born in Japan and based in Poland, Natalia Kitamikado studied industrial design at the École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs in Paris and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. Her artistic practice ranges from product and graphic design to costumes and sets for opera and theatre, including collaborations for MET, La Monnaie, and Polish National Opera.
JET (Junges Ensemble Theater an der Wien) with kind support of Kammeroper Wien:
Leporello / Commendatore: Ivan Zinoviev
Donna Elvira: Sofia Vinnik
Donna Anna: Valentina Petraeva
Zerlina: Tatiana Kuryatnikova
Masetto: Michal Marhold
Don Ottavio: Sreten Manojlovic
Répétiteur: Elizabete Sirante
Stage manager: Otto Kolleritsch
Photos (c) Susanne Hassler
