I am no fan of Peter Sellars. If you are not American (I am Chinese Australian), the various demands by the director made of the viewer to culturally "re-locate" can be really difficult.
The violence with which Mr. Sellars has savaged a trio of the most perfect works of art (Mozart's Don Giovanni, Cosi Fan Tutte and the Marriage of Figaro) has been extreme and not at all equally successfully.
"Marriage" was perhaps the most innovative, setting the action in the penthouse of Trump Tower, with a hapless Countess at the mercy of a domestically and potentially fatally violent and jealous husband. Sellars's treatment of "Cosi" is so obnoxious I still have dyspepsic attacks just thinking about it. He absolutely buries any vestige of Mozart's great humanity.
His (mal/mis)treatment of possibly the greatest work of music theatre, Don Giovanni is only slightly less reprehensible. Manholes and the all-too obvious metaphor of the sewer aside, the one absolutely brilliant masterstroke is casting two brothers (twins?) equally good singers and sexy to boot, as master and servant, and so speaking volumes without any production gimmicks needed. The suggestion that Man is still (the same) Man despite accidents of birth, regardless of social position and the license that status gives, is, one has to admit, quite stunning.
However one brilliant insight cannot redeem the rest.
The violence with which Mr. Sellars has savaged a trio of the most perfect works of art (Mozart's Don Giovanni, Cosi Fan Tutte and the Marriage of Figaro) has been extreme and not at all equally successfully.
"Marriage" was perhaps the most innovative, setting the action in the penthouse of Trump Tower, with a hapless Countess at the mercy of a domestically and potentially fatally violent and jealous husband. Sellars's treatment of "Cosi" is so obnoxious I still have dyspepsic attacks just thinking about it. He absolutely buries any vestige of Mozart's great humanity.
His (mal/mis)treatment of possibly the greatest work of music theatre, Don Giovanni is only slightly less reprehensible. Manholes and the all-too obvious metaphor of the sewer aside, the one absolutely brilliant masterstroke is casting two brothers (twins?) equally good singers and sexy to boot, as master and servant, and so speaking volumes without any production gimmicks needed. The suggestion that Man is still (the same) Man despite accidents of birth, regardless of social position and the license that status gives, is, one has to admit, quite stunning.
However one brilliant insight cannot redeem the rest.