Press Office
12/02/2016
DON GIOVANNI
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Arena di Verona
4th (First night), 10, 17, 30 July - 9:00 pm
12th August - 8:45 pm
On Saturday 4th July at 9:00 pm Don Giovanni by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is being staged, the
fourth debut of the 2015 Opera Festival at the Arena di Verona.
There will be 5 performances with the refined production that very successfully inaugurated the
2013 Opera Festival, created by Franco
Zeffirelli with costumes by Maurizio
Millenotti, choreography by Maria Grazia
Garofoli and lighting design by Paolo Mazzon.
With this opera, conductor Stefano Montanari
debuts on the Arena di Verona podium, after
meeting with extraordinary success in theatres
throughout the world with a Baroque
repertoire and Il Barbiere di Siviglia in April at
Verona’s Teatro Filarmonico.
The leading roles are sung by artists who are very popular with Arena audiences and true
specialists in the relative roles, starting with Carlos Álvarez (4, 10, 17/7) and Dalibor Jenis (30/7 –
12/8) in the role of the dissolute Don Giovanni, whereas, as the Commendatore there is Rafal
Siwek (4, 10/7) and, for the first time at the Arena, Insung Sim (17, 30/7 – 12/8). Donna Anna will
be performed firstly by Irina Lungu (4, 10, 17/7), then Ekaterina Bakanova (30/7 – 12/8), on her
Arena debut, whereas, alternating in the role of Don Ottavio, there will be Saimir Pirgu (4, 30/7 –
12/8) and Leonardo Cortellazzi (10, 17/7), singing for the first time at the Verona amphitheatre;
Maria José Siri (4, 10/7) and Daniela Schillaci (17, 30/7 – 12/8) will alternate as Donna Elvira,
whereas, in the role of the faithful Leporello, Alex Esposito will perform for the first time at the
Arena (4, 10, 17/7), alternating with Marco Vinco (30/7 – 12/8). For all the performances, Christian
Senn will be Masetto, along with Zerlina, performed by Natalia Roman.
The opera features the Fondazione di Verona Arena Orchestra, Chorus, Dance Company and
Technicians, as well as numerous mimes and extras. The Chorus Master is Salvo Sgrò and the
Dance Company Director Renato Zanella.
Further performances: 10, 17, 30 July 9:00 pm - 12th August 8:45 pm.
Il dissoluto punito o sia il Don Giovanni (The Rake punished, or the Don Juan), the opera’s original
title, is a dramma giocoso in two acts to a libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte, composed by Mozart in
1787 and performed for the first time, with everlasting success, in Prague on October 29 th of the
same year. It has all the characteristics of an opera buffa, with its realism and popular characters,
with the addition of a supernatural phenomenon: the statue, which, invited to dinner by Don
Giovanni, will drag the protagonist away to eternal damnation. And it will be precisely this
combination of tragic and comic content that shows two aspects of the same reality: In fact, Don
Giovanni is an opera of great truth and immense lies.
Ironically, the 18th century’s most famous adventurer, Giacomo Casanova was also attracted by
this opera and created a variation of Leporello’s scene in Act 2, when he is put with his back to the
wall by the other characters.
In spite of its worldwide popularity, until 2012
Don Giovanni had absolutely never been
performed on the Arena di Verona stage, just
as its composer was new for the Arena: in fact,
no Mozart opera had been performed before
then on the Verona amphitheatre’s huge
stage. Therefore, it was a great challenge for
the Fondazione Arena di Verona, which
Maestro Zeffirelli enthusiastically accepted.
The director measured himself with this opera
for the ninth time in his long career, since 1957: it was madness, he stated, but aware of the fact
that ”the Arena is the place of theatrical miracles and rare and unexpected representative truths”.
There again, “a masterpiece is always a new opportunity, every time the curtain rises”, the
Maestro loves to quote and, for Zeffirelli, as for Goethe, Don Giovanni is the most beautiful opera
ever composed: an unsolved mystery able to give free play to endless interpretative and
emotional ideas and which, thanks to very well-known melodies, can become a very popular opera
in spite of the difficult score for the amphitheatre’s vast spaces.
As a set for the story, which foresees a succession of different environments, Franco Zeffirelli
transforms the Arena di Verona into a majestic palace, “theatre of the world” for the late 18 th
century aristocrat, the facade of which is seen as one huge scenic structure, which changes
appearance according to the various situations. The production shows a Don Giovanni who is
always fleeing, who does not seem to act in the present, but in a distant dimension, almost higher
than that of humans. He is a god of carnal love, a king of men unable to live without exercising his
overbearing male arrogance, much more than a seducer or the mere characteristic of a “Don
Juan”. However, the sexuality represented in the opera could be defined as declining, described in
the last “frames”, in a series of failures leading to the eternal damnation that makes the
protagonist just a very human “punished rake”, in an inverted apotheosis of sentence and
punishment.
INFO
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