A different 'Don'

Director seeks to bring element of sympathy to legendary ladies' man

Marc Shulgold, Rocky Mountain News

Published June 29, 2006 at midnight

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Don Juan had it coming - after all those years of loving and leaving women by the thousands, he is finally cast into the fires of hell.

Followed by general celebration.

At least, that's the way things usually wrap up in Mozart's magnificent opera, Don Giovanni.

In most productions, a trapdoor opens center stage, and the Don disappears below, leaving those who conspired against him to deliver a joyful chorus warning about the price of a sinful life. Curtain.

Not in the production by Central City Opera opening at the Opera House on Saturday. Director Marc Astafan will bring things to a close right after history's greatest lover boy has been consumed by the flames.

"I always thought that the (celebratory) epilogue was superfluous," he said.

Evidently, Mozart agreed. As Astafan explained, soon after Don Giovanni was premiered in Prague in 1787, the composer rethought the ending. "I found a mention of (the truncated finale) on the back of the (1787) conductor's score," the director said.

With the notable exception of Herbert von Karajan, few modern conductors or directors have cut the last chorus, in which the cast sings: "So ends he who evil did. The death of a sinner always reflects their life."

Central City's production will offer the Don's demise - thus respecting the opera's original title, The Rake Punished - but then skip the heavy-handed message.

"We wanted to focus the story on the characters, rather than present it as a morality play," Astafan said.

The director added that he focused on what made everyone tick, starting with the title character. "I always felt empty at the end, whenever I saw it staged. The bad guy goes to hell - but that's too easy. Why did this happen? Who was he, anyway?"

Underneath all the bravado and lustiness, Astafan suggested, the Don was just another guy with confidence problems.

"I see him as his own worst enemy. I wanted to show his vulnerability, to make him sort of sympathetic at the end - for him to be able to recognize the harm he'd done.

"In Mozart's opera, we don't see (Giovanni) in his glory days. He's past his prime, and in fact, he deteriorates as the story goes on."

It is true that most of the Don's conquests are behind him - as we learn in the "Catalogue Aria," in which his sidekick Leporello recounts the staggering number of women he's bedded.

But what of that memorable flirtatious duet with the newly engaged Zerlina, La ci darem la mano? You have to be impressed with a guy who charms a bride-to-be away from her betrothed. Not necessarily, replied Astafan.

"In that scene, Giovanni is aware of Zerlina's attraction to him. We'll be playing it in a different way, in which the tables are turned. The Don is very still as the scene unfolds. She's after him, so he doesn't have to work too hard."

Only in the chaotic finale to Act One do we observe the title character fully and fearlessly on the attack - not a very flattering picture.

"It isn't a question of liking him," the director says of Giovanni. "But it's possible to try and understand him. I think he's suffering from an addiction."

In Astafan's view, several of the women entangled with the Don choose to be. They are, he suggested, "moths to a flame." Zerlina, for one, and Donna Elvira for another.

"Elvira is chasing after the shark," he said of Giovanni's former lover. "She can't let go of him. She should have broken free, but couldn't."

What most operagoers think of as an entertaining tale of amorous excess (featuring some extraordinary music), the director examined in subtle psychological terms. His research took him straight to the source, Moliere's Don Juan.

"From the play, I learned that Giovanni had a rough relationship with his father," Astafan noted.

And that brought up the pivotal character of the Commendatore. Slain by the Don in the opening scene while trying to rescue his daughter Donna Anna from Giovanni's violent advances, the Commendatore returns as a ghost-like statue in the finale to exact revenge.

"I believe it's crucial to understand that the Commendatore is a protective father, not a jealous husband," Astafan observed.

"I think of the troubled relationship between Mozart and his father."

Marc Shulgold is the music and dance writer. Shulgoldm@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-5296

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