Washington National Opera, under the leadership of General Director Plácido Domingo, presents Mozart's Don Giovanni at The Kennedy Center Opera House, in eight performances from October 25 to November 16. Plácido Domingo conducts six of the eight performances with Israel Gursky conducting performances on November 7 and 13.
The opera, featuring two exciting casts with Erwin Schrott and Ildar Abdrazakov in the title role, is sung in Italian with English translations simultaneously projected above the stage. Celebrated director John Pascoe helms the new production. Don Giovanni, an infamous womanizer, is given one last chance to repent of his philandering ways. But when he adds murder and blasphemy to his lengthy list of sins, human and supernatural forces combine to give this devil his due. And this time not even his faithful servant Leporello can clean up the mess.
Washington National Opera's General Director Plácido Domingo, who recently conducted acclaimed performances of Roméo et Juliette at the Metropolitan Opera, is on the podium for six of eight performances. Israel Gursky, an Assistant Conductor at Washington National Opera since 2001, conducts the opera on November 7 and 13.
Don Giovanni is based on the life and sexual conquests (1,003 in Spain alone!) of the infamous Don Juan. Director John Pascoe describes the opera as a metaphor for life, where all of Don Giovanni's sins come back to haunt him in a final day of reckoning. Pascoe also designed the set and the form-fitting costumes and flowing leather coats, which meld both 18th and 20th-Century styles.
This Don Giovanni has not one but two dynamic singers in the title role: Erwin Schrott, who sang the role here in 2003 and recently at The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and Ildar Abdrazakov, whom audiences will remember from his comic turn here in L'Italiana in Algeri. When not singing the title role, the versatile Ildar Abdrazakov pulls double duty, also sharing the role of Leporello with his brother Askar Abdrazakov.
In the opera, Don Giovanni focuses his sexual attentions on three women, the noblewoman Donna Anna, the lady Donna Elvira, and the country girl Zerlina. Soprano Erin Wall, who sang Fiordiligi in Mozart's Così Fan Tutte last season at Lyric Opera of Chicago, makes her company main stage debut as Donna Anna. Soprano Anja Kampe, who wowed audiences here last season with her stunning Sieglinde in Wagner's Die Walküre, is Donna Elvira. Amanda Squitieri, a former Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist, who most recently appeared here as Lauretta in last season's Gianni Schicchi, is Zerlina.
The men behind these three remarkable women are also strongly cast. Another pair of Washington National Opera debuting artists shares the role of Don Ottavio, Donna Anna's fiancé: Shawn Mathey and John Tessier. Both artists recently sang the role to acclaim—Mathey at National Opéra de Paris and Tessier at National Opéra Montreal. Morris Robinson, also singing with the company for the first time, is the Commendatore, Donna Anna's father. Robinson sang the role last summer at the Tanglewood Festival under the baton of James Levine. Trevor Scheunemann, a former Domingo-Cafrtiz Young Artist, who appeared here as Schaunard in La Bohème earlier this season, and James Shaffran, who has made more than 40 appearances with the company, share the role of Masetto, Zerlina's fiancé. -- www.dc-opera.org
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