I’m kind of torn about my experience with Don Giovanni. Even in the weeks leading up to it I was of two different minds—up until about last Friday or so, I was completely dreading it and I was sure I would loathe it. To be fair to the opera, though, that was partially because my roommate is an opera singer and is Always. Playing. Opera. Music. But I digress; I’m not here to talk about my roommate problems! I’m here to talk about opera problems!
My main complaint about opera is that it’s just not accessible to everyday people, and not just because it’s the strange combination of a poorly told story with beautiful music. I mean, Mamma Mia is a story poorly told through Abba songs, but you don’t need to know Abba to at least like what you’re seeing (not that I think Abba music is beautiful in any way, but you know what I mean). We actually needed to prepare to see Don Giovanni—I kind of think that theater shouldn’t require you to read the summary of the performance beforehand in order to understand what’s going on. If you could go on Wikipedia and read the summary for free and understand more than someone who read no summary and paid over $100 to see the actual performance, I would say that we have a problem.
Now, that’s not to say I didn’t enjoy the performance—for the most part, I did. I definitely enjoyed the first act and invested a lot of energy in reading all the subtitles and watching the performers, but I was kind of burned out by the time the second act rolled around. I found myself studying the shading on the doors of the set rather than paying attention to what was going on with the story. I thought the singers were all very good, particularly the young lady who played the peasant girl whose name started with a Z…but that brings me to another problem—the characters themselves! Their names are barely mentioned more than three times throughout the entire opera! Sure, Giovanni and Anna are easy enough to remember, but I found myself forgetting the more complicated names almost as soon as they were sung (or flashed across my little screen). I also found it impossible to tell Giovanni and Leporello apart from where we were sitting, because you couldn’t tell who was singing and their costumes were too similar. One of them should have had a more distinct costume, for the sake of the people sitting where we were. I didn’t have a problem with any of the other costumes, though; in fact, I really, really liked the peasants’ costumes. Their earth tones coordinated beautifully with the set, which used the same palette of colors (even though, as I think Alyssa pointed out, they might have been a bit too fancy for peasants). While I’m mentioning the set, I also thought that was beautiful and creative. Whoever designed it had a great idea to make it be able to move and easily create different scenes.
Now comes the answer to the big question—was Don Giovanni successful in appealing to a younger generation of operagoers? Honestly, I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and I would have to say that the answer is no. Even though I enjoyed the whole experience of doing something only rich people do (Kayde and I had a discussion on that monstrous line to the bathroom about how we had never seen so much velvet), and I also enjoyed the beautiful singing and exquisite score, I honestly don’t think I would ever pay to see another opera on my own just for the heck of it. It’s just too expensive and too lengthy for me to become a frequent operagoer. Even my roommate, who lives and dies by opera, told me it’s impossible for her to go as often as she would like because she just can’t afford it.
To answer the final question, I would say that the Metropolitan Opera definitely represents that fantasy side of New York (although I get the feeling that Eric would classify it as a nightmare). I completely agree with Sylvia’s comparison of the New York of the opera to the New York of Manhattan—I could definitely see Woody Allen and Diane Keaton having a pseudointellectual conversation about Don Giovanni. I kind of feel like right now would be a good moment to make a pun about fantasy/nightmare and Giovanni getting sucked into hell, but I think I’ve finally run out of steam. Kind of like Don Giovanni itself.
But wait– BOOM! FIRE! SMOKE! I’M GETTING SUCKED INTO OPERA HELLLLLLL!
…sorry, did I just wake you up from your nap?
