SAN FRANCISCO OPERA: JUNE 4- July 14, 2022
Mozart’ s Don Giovanni
Pleasure Has Its Price
Fleeing the scene of his crime, a lecherous nobleman commits a heinous murder—an act so depraved that it unleashes the vengeance of hell itself.
“Don Giovanni” is a two-act opera composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Lorenzo Da Ponte crafted the Italian libretto. The opera is based on a legendary fictional character called “Don Juan,” who is a seducer and libertine.
Mozart’s outrageous comedy tells the tale of an incorrigible young playboy who blazes a path to his own destruction in a single day. Based on the story of Don Juan, Don Giovanni is an amoral youth who is loved by women almost as much as he loves them.
Giovanni embodies “an absolute moral nihilism’, but thrives not so much on desire but on transgression; he is driven not by the satisfaction derived from his seductions but from the breaking of a taboo.
Don Giovanni has been called the finest opera ever composed. Mozart’s classic is a brilliant combination of stark human tragedy and touching comedy, set to music of limitless genius. The subject matter of Don Giovanni has a timeless appeal. There are many elements in this work which combine to form both serious and comic opera. As the novel unfolds, a story about a man ingenuously seduces and abandons women across Europe before he is ultimately murdered by his ghost.