CAUTION! A performance for adult viewers !!!
During the performance, short-term strobe lights will be used twice.
33rd Mozart Festival in Warsaw
Theatre of the Warszawska Opera Kameralna
Wolfgang Amadeusz Mozart
Don Giovanni
Il dissoluto punito, ossia Il Don Giovanni
Opera in two acts, recitatives translated into Polish by Stanisław Barańczak
Duration: 180 min., 1 entr’acte (15 min.)
Composer | Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Libretto | Lorenzo da Ponte
Premiere | 29 May 2021
Music director: Tadeusz Kozłowski
Staging and director: Michał Znaniecki
Set design: Rafał Olbiński, Luigi Scoglio
Costumes: Michał Znaniecki
Choreography: Inga Pilchowska
Lighting director: Dawid Karolak
Multimedia: Karolina Jacewicz
CAST:
Don Giovanni – Łukasz Klimczak
Leporello – Adam Zaremba
Donna Anna – Joanna Moskowicz
Donna Elwira – Natalia Rubiś
Zerlina – Aleksandra Borkiewicz-Cłapińska
Don Ottavio – Aleksander Kunach
Masetto – Dawid Biwo
Commendatore – Remigiusz Łukomski
Dancers:
Katarzyna Reisch, Anna Reisch, Joanna Kierzkowska, Zyta Bujacz-Dziel, Karolina Banaszek, Natalia Jóźwiak
Vocal Ensemble of the Warszawska Opera Kameralna
Chorus Master – Krzysztof Kusiel-Moroz
Period Instrument Orchestra of the Warszawska Opera Kameralna
Musicae Antiquae Collegium Varsoviense
Conductor
Adam Banaszak
The music of „Don Giovanni” is impossible to forget. From the first moment, from the ominous strike of andante in D minor (overture), and further to the dancing allegro in D major, and beyond… A perfect start to a dramma giocoso, a joyful drama (!), from which no one, like him, Mozart, made full of it. So brilliant and perfect. It is full of mysteries and questions. What really happened between Donna Anna and Don Giovanni? Can Anna, Don Ottavio (as well as Donna Elvira), be capable of murder? Do we really find 2065 names, surnames, addresses in the lover’s catalogue? Why does Zerlina ask Masetto to beat her? Who is Elvira’s maid? What is Leporello’s role in all this (narrator, friend, mask, alter ego, mirror)? And in human terms: what is love (“Don Juan kills love” – wrote Shaw), freedom (“Viva la liberta”), death?
And most importantly: who is Don Giovanni? Or rather: who is the Commendatore? Multiplying questions. Michał Bristiger wrote: “A murder has been committed (a new dramatic moment in the history of opera!). And it is a »breaking« moment, meaning it contains within it an absolute irrevocability. The opera tells about this irrevocability, about the inevitability of Don Giovanni being embraced by a force from beyond the everyday world, regardless of how it binds itself with punishment”. So, murder, crime, inevitability, punishment. Perhaps damnation, hell. Here’s a new beginning to a dramma giocoso, a human comedy, in which there’s nothing to laugh about.
***
I really enjoy this show. It is something more than the latest theatre premiere.
It’s an event!
In the projections by Rafał Olbiński, the emotions and subconsciousness of the title character are buzzing.
Alina Ert-Eberdt – Segregatory
The opera “Don Giovanni” staged by Michał Znaniecki is, in my opinion, intended to be watched and listened to multiple times, in order to be able to taste it and fully enjoy it. (…) the set design lures and entices us to observe, deduct and guess through the openwork gaps. And here, I must admit that I found myself staring many times. Often times, the amount of stimuli I was taking gave me a big “wow”. The small space of the Opera Kameralna became a kind of “silva rerum” in Znaniecki’s production. It happened on the proscenium, on the stage, in the back of the stage, in the side proscenium stages. It was only after a while that I realized with regret that stopping at the six hundred and eighth detail knocks out my musical awareness.
Monika Jazownik – Presto
The best soloists were brought from different parts of the country, including the conductor, so that the most important element – Mozart’s music – remains intact
Bronisław Tumiłowicz – Przegląd