The Met’s production, directed by Michael Grandage, is aptly set in the opera’s own era, and Grandage captures its implications with an extraordinary dramatic clarity that’s equally the work of the splendid cast of singers. “Don Giovanni,” which Mozart composed and premièred in 1787, is a closeup, cross-sectional panorama of feudal Europe as seen from the revelatory angle of sex and love, pleasure and power, seduction and fidelity, and the state of relations between men and women. The main plot of the opera is the effort of Donna Anna and her betrothed, Don Ottavio (Dmitry Korchak), along with other victims of Don Giovanni, to identify the rapist and murderer and then to catch him and take revenge for his crimes against women and his murder of the Commendatore.
In the ensuing sword fight, Don Giovanni (Peter Mattei) kills the Commendatore and flees, unrecognized. Her cries are heard by her father, the Commendatore (James Morris), who challenges her masked assailant. The opera’s first dramatic scene finds him in the bedroom of a noblewoman, Donna Anna (sung by Elza van den Heever), who fights him off. Don Giovanni-his Don Juan-isn’t just a serial seducer, he’s a rapist. Mozart’s glorious music sets the scene on a monstrosity, and his musical realization of a monstrous world and its deliverance is one of the glories of the history of art. I saw it on Saturday night it’s as much of a historical revelation as it is a musical delight. The current production of “Don Giovanni” at the Metropolitan Opera, running through March 6th, is the opera of the moment, a profoundly political and moral vision that’s as much of our time as of Mozart’s own. Photograph by Julieta Cervantes/The New York Times/Redux Kate Lindsey and Adam Plachetka in “Don Giovanni,” at the Met, February 2nd.
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