Bamberger Symphoniker: Mozart: Don Giovanni (Masetto)

Don Giovanni – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

1st December – Konzertsaal Konzerthalle Bamberg, JosephKeilberthSaal; 4th December– Elbphilarmonie, Hamburg


Too much passion can be your downfall! Mozart’s opera about the rise and fall of Don Giovanni, one of civilization’s supreme seducers, whose serial love intrigues wreak complete and utter chaos in the female emotional order, holds up an exemplary moral: passion causes suffering. This dramatic work, suffused with fateful sombreness, is all about contrasts: quotations from popular hits of the day, the much-loved duet »Là ci darem la mano« (»There we will hold hands«) and the famous champagne aria, are the elixir of Mozart’s incomparable parties and masquerades. Yet other motifs keep rearing their heads to remind us of the petrified commendatore as the epitome of probity and morality, and of the hero’s jeopardy. Mozart composed »Don Giovanni« in collaboration with the brilliant librettist Lorenzo da Ponte – a dream team, eliciting this enthusiastic verdict from the Prague theatre’s manager in 1787, the year of the premiere: »As long as we have these two, we will never see the theatre starve!« The challenge: the audience must be able to feel, laugh, and suffer too. For the players and singers, that entails relentless rehearsals. Love, anger, hate, lies, jealousy, must all be expressed as the composer intended – a demand as unheard of in the opera business of Mozart’s day as it was revolutionary! The Bambergers’ Bohemian roots go all the way back to the orchestra which played in Prague’s Estates Theatre back then. The premiere was a stunning success! Exactly 230 years later, we re-enter the emotional universe of this »opera to end all operas«, bringing its pain and passion into the concert hall – and in the title role, our »Portrait Artist« this year: Christian Gerhaher!

Jakub Hrůša Conductor
Christian Gerhaher Don Giovanni
Simona Šaturová Donna Anna
Martin Mitterrutzner Don Ottavio
Goran Jurić Commendatore
Layla Claire Donna Elvira
Tareq Nazmi Leporello
BOŽIDAR SMILJANIĆ Masetto
Sophie Karthäuser Zerlina
Tschechischer Philharmonischer Chor Brno
Petr Fiala Chorus Master

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart »Don Giovanni«, Dramma giocoso in zwei Akten KV 527 (konzertante Aufführung in italienischer Sprache)