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Nearly a Male Lulu
'Don Giovanni' in Aix-en-Provence,
a black comedy of sex and loneliness,
reviewed by GIUSEPPE PENNISI
A much awaited production of Mozart's Don Giovanni inaugurated the 2010 Aix-en-Provence Festival on 1 July 2010, and your reviewer attended the third performance on 5 July. The main reasons why this production is important are as follows:
- For the first time since the 1998 production -- staged by Peter Book and conducted, on alternative evenings, by Claudio Abbado and Daniel Harding -- the festival dared to propose a new Don Giovanni. The Brook-Abbado-Harding production has been considered for years to be a milestone, has toured around the world and also has also been revived in Aix-en-Provence with much acclaim.
- The challenge of staging, costumes and dramaturgy had been entrusted to a Russian team (Dmitri Tcherniakov, Elena Zaitseva, Alexei Parin). This is a young team, but already well-known, although not for Mozart productions...
Copyright © 10 July 2010
Giuseppe Pennisi,
Rome, Italy
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