Director's Note: Don Giovanni
By Mariusz Trelinski

What fascinates and enthralls me most about opera is its timelessness. The seemingly repetitive and never changing stories travel through centuries, while its protagonists turn mythical and, inconspicuously, penetrate our lives like some good friends. Othello, Carmen, Don Giovanni are nowadays names of furniture, of fashionable establishments and perfume. As a director, I must be aware that any given story has been told hundreds of times and that you know full well that Madama Butterfly will commit hara-kiri and Don Giovanni will end up in hell.

This is the reason why my Don Giovanni is, at the same time, both a live person and a mythical being. While telling his story I also play with his character, fully aware that it is eternal, that it became a sign, a symbol. This is the reason why, at the beginning of the story, the drama's heroines are standing at his grave and resurrecting him. The history, you know, has to repeat itself. Everyone else exists only because of him; they cannot live without him. This is the reason why Don Giovanni, as a character, is always recreated and destroyed. Quite frequently the heroines of this story hold pieces of his clothing. It isn't even essential for Don Giovanni to be present on the stage. He is the force permeating this entire story; he is in each character; everyone is infected by him. The most fascinating and perfidious aspect of this Mozart opera is that it does not talk about love. Logic, detachment and exquisite, calculated charm - so brilliantly incorporated into Mozart's mathematical score - are the main protagonist's character traits, determining his uniqueness. Don Giovanni does not love; he seduces. His actions are cold and precise like those of a surgeon. He is a hypnotist mesmerizing his characters one by one and seducing them, like a collector pinning down each new, additional butterfly. Their number is infinite. Fulfillment cannot be reached, since every woman conquered is no longer of interest. Don Giovanni is always "en route," in perpetual motion, seeking out new conquests, without an end. It is hardly surprising that our protagonist is more and more clearly wishing for a respite; he wants to rest. It is at this point that a magical figure of a girl in white appears before him - the image of his soul, of the eternal feminine, and, maybe, just of death.

A couple of words on convention. Some years ago, Federico Fellini made a provocative statement, saying "I am moved by a sunset only when I have built it in a studio." In this statement, Fellini defined the convention of art, whose beauty is born of artificiality. It is specifically this trait that fascinates and excites me in the opera, namely - the awareness of form. People communicating by singing, rather than by speech. A wonderful, conditional world based on convention, created by men, separated from us by the moat of orchestra and framed by the curtain. I have always had the impression that whenever an opera attempts to imitate life, it is lying; yet whenever it relies on and claims the convention, it, paradoxically, becomes true.

Being a film director, I am particularly sensitized to this issue, since the so-called truthfulness to life is much more keenly felt in cinema. In opera I am looking for something different. While trying to leave room for our imagination, I try to avoid building specific settings pretending to be a house or a palace. Instead, I surround the protagonists with a conditional space, a space where the music will sound. All music contains shapes, colors, and images. The opera of all operas, Mozart's Don Giovanni, is a work of art, where the passion and heat of emotions is locked in a mathematical composition. The concepts it evokes are specifically those of mathematics, logics, and game. Thus the idea of enclosing the characters in a geometrical space, as if in a magic box so typical for that era, where puppets were manipulated by invisible strings. This, in turn, brings up additional connotations to the early theater, evoking the commedia dell'arte, which had such a marvelous way of combining the comic with the serious. Dramma giocoso - a funny drama - is a subtitle that Mozart wrote on the score, as if trying to give instructions to future performers.