Opera blends comedy, drama, supernatural

The Metropolitan Opera’s Emmy Award-winning series The Met: Live in HD continues with Mozart’s Don Giovani

The Metropolitan Opera’s Emmy Award-winning series The Met: Live in HD continues with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s spectacular Don Giovani Sunday, Oct. 29 at the Salmar Classic Theatre.

Set in Spain of the 1600s the opera opens outside the commendatore’s palace, where Leporello grumbles about his duties as servant to Don Giovanni, a dissolute nobleman.

The infamous womanizer makes one conquest after another until the ghost of Donna Anna’s father, (whom Giovanni killed) makes his appearance.

The commendatore offers Giovanni one last chance to repent for his multitudinous improprieties. But Giovani refuses to change his ways and is sucked down into hell by evil spirits.

Considered by some to be Mozart’s best opera, Don Giovani features high drama, hysterical comedy and magnificent music.

Don Giovanni or Il dissoluto punito, ossia il Don Giovanni, literally The Rake Punished, is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and with an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte.

It was premiered by the Prague Italian opera at the Teatro di Praga on Oct. 29, 1787, where the work was rapturously received.

As a staple of the standard operatic repertoire, it appears as number seven on the Operabase list of the most-performed operas worldwide.

Don Giovani plays Sunday, Oct. 29 beginning at 9:55 a.m. at the Salmar Classic Theatre. Approximate running time is four hours.

Tickets are $24 for adults and $18 for students and children. Season passes at $224 for adults and $168 for students and children, are available at the Salmar Grand Theatre.

 

Salmon Arm Observer