Hastings on Saturday and Sunday 3/4 June 2017
Marcio da Silva says: Come and watch an international cast of young singers perform one of Mozart’s masterpieces this Saturday and Sunday at St. Mary in the Castle. Don Giovanni represents a mixture of several human feelings including love, lust, hate, anger, vengeance, pain, sadness and jealousy. All are taken to the extreme and are treated simultaneously with drama and comedy. That is what makes staging it such a challenge.
You will see St Mary in the Castle transformed like you have never seen before. Don’t miss out on what could be an unforgettable evening. The opera will be sung in Italian with English surtitles. The chorus will be sung by members of the Hastings Philharmonic Chamber Choir and the evening will be accompanied by members of the Hastings Philharmonic Orchestra and Petra Hajduchova on the harpsichord. The Saturday performance will be conducted by Neylson Crepalde and the Sunday performance by Marcio da Silva.”
The notorious Don Giovanni is the archetypal amoral womaniser of all time and his nefarious love interests lead to drama and comedy aplenty exposing, as it does, both the human foibles and virtues to be found in the well-rounded characters. Don Giovanni lives life to the full in a never-ending pursuit of hedonism, regardless of the cost in broken hearts and destroyed lives along the way, but his victims of past relationships catch up with him as he meets his nemesis. The finale with an unrepentant Don Giovanni has stirred philosophical and artistic conjecture among many later writers including George Bernard Shaw, whose ‘Man and Superman’ includes a dramatic interlude where three of the Mozart characters: Don Giovanni, the statue of the Commendatore and Donna Anna are joined by the Devil in conversation on the nature of morality.