Don Giovanni
An opera in 2 acts, sung in Italian with recitatives in Lithuanian
Libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte
Recitatives translated into Lithuanian by Vytautas Bložė
“Hush! I seem to smell femininity!” whispers Don Giovanni, lurking for the next victim of his charms. Such absurd declaration does not surprise his faithful servant Leporello: it is part of his daily routine to wait patiently while his master is courting yet another lady. The catalogue he has compiled already lists more than two and a half thousand seduced women in five countries, “one thousand and three” in Spain alone. Yet the sweetness of life and the pleasures of the flesh, when indulged beyond measure, must inevitably come at a price: one of the ladies seduced and abandoned by Don Giovanni will become a curse for the charming libertine who bravely accepts the stone guest’s invitation to a duel…
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s dramma giocoso about the adventures and punishment of the licentious rake took a new form on the stage of the Klaipėda State Music Theatre in May 2019. This time Don Giovanni was staged by renowned Lithuanian theatre director Jonas Vaitkus, who has previously taken up the interpretation of this opera in a 1987 feature film. Director’s idea that Don Giovanni’s promiscuity is equally characteristic of men and women is expressed by the appearance of ambisexual, screaming creatures next to the opera characters, who try to fit in, take part in the action, or even direct the characters’ destinies. This provocative mission was entrusted to the dancers of the Klaipėda State Musical Theatre Ballet Company under the direction of Aurelijus Liškauskas, and even to the choreographer himself. Professor Josef Wallnig of Mozarteum University Salzburg, an acclaimed conductor and founder of Mozart Opera Studies Institute hailed as the ambassador of Austrian music and Mozart’s authority, was invited to supervise the production as its music director.
