Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
Alternate Giovannis
Tenor Paul Appleby discusses the challenge of different versions and stagings
Mozart: Don Giovanni
- San Diego Civic Theatre, 1100 Third Avenue, Downtown San Diego
Video:
Luciano Pavarotti - Dalla sua Pace - Don Giovanni
Paul Appleby: You know there are two version of Don Giovanni. There’s the Prague version and the Vienna version. The Prague version does not include Dalla sua pace. That was written later for the Vienna version but there is no Il mio tesoro in the Vienna version. The tradition has been to do both arias for a long time. More scholarly approaches have been trying to make historically accurate reproductions of these two versions.
San Diego Reader: Because that’s what opera is. It’s a scholarly exercise. It’s not entertainment. It’s not about the audience, it’s scholarly. [Read sarcastic].
PA: Sometimes in an attempt to be authentic to one of these two versions they will omit one of the arias. The problem is that if you just dump all the arias for all the roles from both productions into one show then it becomes quite long and I think it disrupts the flow of the story telling. What our director, Nick Muni, has devised in this production is — where doing more of the version with Dalla sua pace — but instead of keeping both arias in their traditional places he has moved Il mio tesoro to the top of the second act. That is very interesting because I think it puts the character of Ottavio much more toward the center of the action.
Video:
Fritz Wunderlich "Il mio tesoro intanto" Don Giovanni
SDR: Right. He always seems as if he’s a peripheral character.
PA: Very much so and I think this is what is so great about what our director and cast are doing. It’s easy to see the characters as foils for Don Giovanni to perform his Don Juan act off of. You notice that Don Giovanni doesn’t have a stand-out aria that we think of besides the champagne aria but Leporello has a much more substantial and structured aria. All the women have gorgeous and powerful arias that are very seriously composed--very dramatic, very psychologically complicated. Giovanni is, if anything, the most ephemeral hard-to-nail-down character. I think that’s why we can’t think of the other characters and secondary to him. Really what compels the audience is our investment in these other characters.
SDR: I think Mozart must be doing that purposefully to create sympathetic character for the bad nobleman to abuse his power on.
PA: Definitely. I’m always reading reviews or commentaries about Don Ottavio being a wimp. First of all, as an actor, I can’t make a judgement of the character I’m playing and then trying to make a representation of that judgement. Even the biggest wimp in the world probably doesn’t think of himself as a wimp. Anyone who was that self-aware would try to fight against it. We need to keep in mind that each of these characters has their own prerogatives and their own journey. The plot of this opera is so well known that there is a tendency to know where the scene is going and therefore omit the path to that end as an actor. In this version we’re being asked to not play the ending before it happens.
Here's something you might be interested in.
Alternate Giovannis
Tenor Paul Appleby discusses the challenge of different versions and stagings
Alternate Giovannis
Tenor Paul Appleby discusses the challenge of different versions and stagings
Mozart: Don Giovanni
- San Diego Civic Theatre, 1100 Third Avenue, Downtown San Diego
Video:
Luciano Pavarotti - Dalla sua Pace - Don Giovanni
Paul Appleby: You know there are two version of Don Giovanni. There’s the Prague version and the Vienna version. The Prague version does not include Dalla sua pace. That was written later for the Vienna version but there is no Il mio tesoro in the Vienna version. The tradition has been to do both arias for a long time. More scholarly approaches have been trying to make historically accurate reproductions of these two versions.
San Diego Reader: Because that’s what opera is. It’s a scholarly exercise. It’s not entertainment. It’s not about the audience, it’s scholarly. [Read sarcastic].
PA: Sometimes in an attempt to be authentic to one of these two versions they will omit one of the arias. The problem is that if you just dump all the arias for all the roles from both productions into one show then it becomes quite long and I think it disrupts the flow of the story telling. What our director, Nick Muni, has devised in this production is — where doing more of the version with Dalla sua pace — but instead of keeping both arias in their traditional places he has moved Il mio tesoro to the top of the second act. That is very interesting because I think it puts the character of Ottavio much more toward the center of the action.
Video:
Fritz Wunderlich "Il mio tesoro intanto" Don Giovanni
SDR: Right. He always seems as if he’s a peripheral character.
PA: Very much so and I think this is what is so great about what our director and cast are doing. It’s easy to see the characters as foils for Don Giovanni to perform his Don Juan act off of. You notice that Don Giovanni doesn’t have a stand-out aria that we think of besides the champagne aria but Leporello has a much more substantial and structured aria. All the women have gorgeous and powerful arias that are very seriously composed--very dramatic, very psychologically complicated. Giovanni is, if anything, the most ephemeral hard-to-nail-down character. I think that’s why we can’t think of the other characters and secondary to him. Really what compels the audience is our investment in these other characters.
SDR: I think Mozart must be doing that purposefully to create sympathetic character for the bad nobleman to abuse his power on.
PA: Definitely. I’m always reading reviews or commentaries about Don Ottavio being a wimp. First of all, as an actor, I can’t make a judgement of the character I’m playing and then trying to make a representation of that judgement. Even the biggest wimp in the world probably doesn’t think of himself as a wimp. Anyone who was that self-aware would try to fight against it. We need to keep in mind that each of these characters has their own prerogatives and their own journey. The plot of this opera is so well known that there is a tendency to know where the scene is going and therefore omit the path to that end as an actor. In this version we’re being asked to not play the ending before it happens.
Comments