Mozart: Don Giovanni - dir. Peter Sellars (Part 1 of 3) [English Subtitles]

Don Giovanni, KV 527 (1787) Composer: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Librettist: Lorenzo da Ponte Production: Peter Sellars Don Giovanni: Eugene Perry Leporello: Herbert Perry Donna Elvira: Lorraine Hunt Lieberson Donna Anna: Dominique Labelle Don Ottavio: Carroll Freeman Zerlina: Ai Lan Zhu Masetto: Elmore James Commendatore: James Patterson Wiener Symphoniker Conductor: Craig Smith Sung in Italian with English subtitles. In Peter Sellars’ evocative 1990 production of Don Giovanni, the setting of Mozart’s drama giocoso is transformed from the aristocratic Seville of the mid 17th century to a row of broken down crack houses on a street in East Harlem in the late 1980s, when New York’s long running crack-cocaine epidemic had made eerily desolate slums out of vast swaths of the city. It is here that our beloved Giovanni ekes out an existence as a junkie and street person. And yet despite his circumstances, Giovanni has an unmistakeable hunger for life, which we quickly see can manifest itself in brutal rage.