VI. Mozart’s Don Giovanni (1994-1996) and Cosi fan tutte (2005-2006)
In the middle of the 1980s, Patrice Chéreau participes actively in the debates surrounding the project for the Opéra Bastille. His production of Don Giovanni should have featured in the inaugural season of the new theatre, but it is ultimately in 1994, at the Salzburg Festival, that the production is staged. For the sets of this dramma giocoso, Patrice Chéreau and Richard Peduzzi revive the idea of a protean wall, already used for Lucio Silla. At the end of the opera, a section of the wall is demolished by the immense sculpture of the Commendatore’s head which has just crushed Don Juan’s body. For the director, the story of the libertine represents a “male version of Lulu” taking us back to the “myth of the man who seduces and destroys”, and who, “by destroying, destroys himself”.
After a ten-year hiatus, Chéreau returns to the opera stage with a third Mozart opera: Cosi fan tutte. To express the torments of the two young couples who dangerously test the fidelity of their love, he challenges the perception that the opera is a comic work: “What if Cosi was anything but bubbly and light-hearted?”. Chéreau seeks to reveal the discreet yet sombre subtleties in the loving relationship and depict a joyless melancholia that leaves deep wounds. For this production, he opts for an anti-set: the emptiness of a theatre stage stripped bare, reminiscent of the set he chose for L’Italiana in Algeri for his debut as an opera director in Spoletto.Don Giovanni (1994-1996) et Cosi fan tutte de Mozart (2005-2006)
Ros Ribas
Ros Ribas
