UoT Opera’s fall production of Don Giovanni will open in three weeks time.  Today, in Walter Hall we got a few hints on what we may be seeing plus some semi staged excerpts.

For director Marilyn Gronsdale one way into Don Giovanni (and she accepts that there are many) is to see it as being about how the actions of the powerful impact the lives of the many.  In a sexual context it’s clearly of relevance to our times with a serial groper in the White House, a British cabinet minister out on his ear for sexual impropriety and one of Hollywood’s most powerful figures rapidly being cast into outer darkness.  One technique to be used to emphasise this is a silent chorus of women who will witness/bear witness to the action.  Maybe this is something like the Land Assembly in Peter Hinton’s take on Louis Riel?  We also learned that the design aesthetic will be stylized 1940s film noir and that we may be in for a surprise with the ending.

Act 2 sextet: Brendan Friesen, Matthew Cairns, Alyssa Durnie, Jamie Groote, Sarah Abelard, Alex Halliday (I think)

Continue reading →