He is probably the most famous playboy of all time: Don Giovanni. According to his servant Leporello, he has seduced 1,003 women in Spain alone. But who is Don Giovanni really? “Chi son io tu non saprai”, seems to be his answer to Donna Anna at the start of the opera, after he has tried to win her over by force. “You’ll never know who I am.” Indeed, his character defies any precise definition; he always remains changeable and unpredictable. Because Don Giovanni is a character without any consciousness. He is the principle that raises human questions about good and evil, desire and duty, transgression and punishment.
Moments later, a duel escalates between Don Giovanni and the Commendatore, Donna Anna’s father, which ends fatally for the latter. Don Giovanni feels no remorse, however, and throws himself into new amorous adventures full of vigour and zest for life. Donna Elvira and Zerlina are to be his next conquests. But his pursuers’ net is drawing ever tighter...
After “Le nozze di Figaro”, “Don Giovanni” is the second major collaboration between Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his librettist Lorenzo da Ponte. The premiere on 29 October 1787 at the Prague National Theatre proved so popular that Mozart himself reported in a letter that it had received “resounding applause” and that Emperor Joseph II had expressly requested that the opera also be performed in Vienna. After several revisions by Mozart, “Don Giovanni” celebrated its Viennese premiere on 7 May 1788.
Da Ponte’s libretto draws on the work by Tirso de Molina, which is also the basis for Molière’s “Don Juan”. But it is above all Mozart’s music that gives the plot its metaphysical dimension, making Don Giovanni the embodiment of the senses - the very essence of life itself.
Following her successful production of “La Cenerentola”, the director Cecilia Ligorio is returning to Oper Köln together with her team and is exploring the myth of “Don Giovanni” from a present-day female perspective. The celebrated Mozart conductor Tomáš Netopil breathes musical life into the score on the podium of the Gürzenich Orchestra.