Don Giovanni, Opera’s Bad Boy & Legendary Lover is back with a flourish at the Baxter Theatre!
Cape Town Opera and the UCT Opera School continue their exploration of Mozart’s mature operas with a theatrically daring take on his thrilling Don Juan adaptation.
Legendary lover, sadistic manipulator and cold-blooded villain. “640 Italians. 231 Germans. 100 French and 91 Turks. But in Spain – there are already 1003,” boasts the Don…. Has there ever been a more irrepressible rogue than Don Giovanni? With 2065 names in his little black book, Don Giovanni can lay fair claim to the title of the world’s greatest seducer. But one night in Seville, literature’s most famous sex addict goes too far – and must face supernatural retribution for his crimes.
Don Giovanni has inspired obsessive admiration ever since it was created – along with Hamlet and the sea, Flaubert believed it was one of “the three finest things God ever made” – and the greatest singers of every generation long to put their stamp on its memorable characters.
Yet Mozart had a young cast in mind when he penned the opera – the first Giovanni was 21, and the first Donna Anna 24 – and Don Giovanni springs off the page with a visceral authenticity when performed by energetic twenty-somethings, making it a perfect fit for the young and vibrant UCT Opera School students and Cape Town Opera Studio members.
Thesele Kemane and Riaan Hunter
Photograph by Bernard Bruwer
THE TEAM:
Matthew Wild and Kamal Khan return as director and conductor to create a new production of the opera, following their darkly illuminating Così fan tutte in 2012 – “an entertaining production which unites sublime music with thought-provoking interpretation” (Cape Argus). “The Don propels himself through his last night on earth with manic abandon, compelling love, hate, lust and obsession from all who orbit around him,” says Wild. “No other opera explores sexual and romantic compulsion so arrestingly – themes we will foreground in a show that is young, raw and startling.”
WHEN & WHERE:
20, 21, 22, 23 August @ 19:30
24 August @ 18:00
Baxter Theatre, Rondebosch
PLEASE NOTE:The opera is sung in Italian with English surtitles projected above the stage.
Not suitable for children under the age of 16. Partial nudity and violence.
