Dmitri Tcherniakov’s Don Giovanni recorded at the 2010 Aix-en-Provence festival is full on Regie.  He takes the characters and story of Mozart/DaPonte and recasts them quite radically.  Zerlina is Donna Anna’s daughter.  Donna Elvira, Donna Anna’s cousin, is married to Don Giovanni.  Leporello is a family member too.  The sense is of one extended, conventional, bourgeois family in which Don Giovanni is a fatally disruptive intrusion.  Tcherniakov changes the time line too.  Instead of taking place over a 24 hour period the story plays out over many weeks.

Continue reading →