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This modern-dress studio production is “not your parents’ Don Giovanni” – the very opening shots, depicting a real New York slum full of rundown buildings, dead rats and garbage-covered snow, make that clear. Set in the South Bronx, this Giovanni strips the characters of their social statuses, keeps humor to the barest minimum, and brings forth loudly and clearly all the darkness that normally only simmers below the opera’s surface. Anna is an obvious rape victim who turns to heroin to escape from her trauma. Masetto does indeed beat Zerlina. And Giovanni and Leporello, innately “not so different,” are here portrayed as identical African American twins – a nearly interchangeable pair of streetwise, leather-clad, coke-snorting, gun-wielding hoods. Ensembles are staged as interpretive dances, and the finale is a hodgepodge of surreal horror, with a green-faced Commendatore, a somber little girl who lures pedophile Giovanni toward his doom, and bare-chested “demons,” both male and female, rising from the pavement.

I can’t say I love such a grungy, brutal vision of Mozart’s dramma giocoso, but I must admit, it works. The gritty visuals may clash with the elegant music, but director Sellars manages to convince me (a) that the ugliness he depicts lies innately within the libretto, all he does is make it more overt, and (b) that apart from the supernatural ending, everything in the opera could easily happen, and probably does all too often, in the ghettos of today.

Eugene Perry’s Giovanni is an appropriately magnetic presence. Handsome and athletic, with a rich, dusky baritone, he strikes an ideal balance between suaveness, menace, and what one review I’ve read aptly calls “quiet power.” His brother Herbert Perry displays a heavier yet equally handsome voice and equal magnetism as a smooth-talking, serious Leporello. The two have predictably excellent chemistry. Dominique Labelle is a strong, sweet- if light-voiced Anna, conveying her agony clearly yet subtly. Her Ottavio, Carroll Freeman, sings with a sweet yet thin, dryish tenor, but his acting is compelling: this Ottavio is a passionate, anguished character whose world crumbles as his friendship with Giovanni shatters and his fiancée spirals out of control. Meanwhile, Lorraine Hunt is easily one of the greatest Elviras in any filmed Giovanni, traditional or non-. Her light, creamy mezzo is lovely and she performs with outstanding passion, infusing a potentially silly concept of the character (a sleazily-dressed yet Bible-thumping, knife-wielding near-hysteric) with true pathos. Ai Lan Zhu is an adequate Zerlina, with a warm, purring soprano, though her acting is fairly bland – Sellars seems to view the character as a weak victim who only grows a spine after her near-rape. She’s well matched by Elmore James’s solid, brutish yet vaguely sympathetic Masetto. Finally, James Patterson is a thunderous if not quite chilling Commendatore. Craig Smith conducts most of the score with moderately paced elegance, but handles the recitatives more freely, with wildly varying tempos for dramatic effect. Incidentally, this is one of the few filmed Giovannis to include Leporello and Zerlina’s “razor” duet – played for shock value instead of laughs. Sellars’s camera direction is full of intense close-ups and odd angles that enhance the disturbing atmosphere, while the subtitles are a slangy “modern” rendition of the text.

Depending on your personal taste, this “ghetto” Giovanni is either disgusting, illuminating, or a little bit of both. But one thing is certain: it isn’t boring. I’d never call it definitive, but all the same, I have to recommend it.

Peter Sellars - (1990) Don Giovanni, Act I.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1h 34mn
Size: 	1.55 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	694x476 ~> 694x535
Aspect ratio:  	1.295
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	1 900 Kbps
BPP: 	0.240
Audio
#1:  	Italian 5.1ch AC-3 @ 448 Kbps

https://nitro.download/view/65613742CADA4C6/Peter_Sellars_-_(1990)_Don_Giovanni,_Act_I.mkv https://nitro.download/view/98C724714A6B698/Peter_Sellars_-_(1990)_Don_Giovanni,_Act_II.mkv

Language(s):Italian
Subtitles:English

The post Peter Sellars – Don Giovanni (1990) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Overview
John Adams’s groundbreaking work vividly brings to life President Nixon’s 1972 visit to communist China. Peter Sellars’s Met production, based on his 1987 world-premiere staging, features choreography by Mark Morris and stars James Maddalena as Nixon, Robert Brubaker as Chairman Mao, Janis Kelly as First Lady Pat Nixon, Russell Braun as Chinese Premier Chou En-lai, and Kathleen Kim as Chiang Ch’ing, Mao’s wife. From the pomp of the public displays to the intimacy of the protagonists most private moments, Adams, Sellars, and librettist Alice Goodman reveal the real characters behind the headlines in this landmark American opera.

metoperashop.org

Synopsis of the opera

Reviews
“Air Force One finally landed on the stage of the Met — and so did perhaps the greatest American opera of the last quarter-century.”
Associated Press

“The scene in which the presidential plane descends for the arrival of Nixon and his entourage remains musically exhilarating and theatrically dazzling. The orchestra erupts with big band bursts, rockish riffs and shards of fanfares: a heavy din of momentous pomp….As a conductor Mr. Adams brought an obvious command of the metric complexities of the score to his performance. I like that he never pushed the music and tried to tease out its mysticism and hazy harmonic richness.”
The New York Times

“Not since “Porgy and Bess” has an American opera won such universal acclaim as “Nixon in China,” a piece made of equally impressive contributions by the composer, John Adams, the librettist, Alice Goodman, and the director, Peter Sellars.”
The New Yorker

“…A transformative score that demonstrated the full range of what Minimalism could accomplish…In his first stage work, Adams showed that the pared-down toolbox of standard harmonies, chugging rhythms, unembellished scales, and patient repetitions could yield an old-fashioned bone-and-gristle drama.”
New York Magazine

“When John Adams’s opera “Nixon in China” had its world premiere in 1987, it was provocative, edgy, audacious. Twenty-four years later, it’s come to the Metropolitan Opera and, along the way, become a Modern Masterpiece.”
The Washington Post

“Adams’s score, which he led incisively on Wednesday in his house conducting debut, is a juggernaut of chugging minimalism…[and] also ingeniously tailored to its own settings and dramatic personae, chief among them Nixon himself, whose character inspired Adams to insert a saxophone-rich swing band sound right into the heart of the minimalist machine.”
Boston Globe

“Some of Adams’ strongest music… This is operatic composition of a very high order.”
MusicalAmerica.com

“Having finally arrived at the Met, “Nixon in China” has traveled the world. It is a masterpiece, a staple of the opera repertory…”
Variety

https://nitro.download/view/F79AFD93718747B/Nixon_in_China_(Peter_Sellars,_2011).mkv
https://nitro.download/view/FFF87F9C4CE94E8/Nixon_in_China_(Peter_Sellars,_2011).idx
https://nitro.download/view/298E8C3FFE476C1/Nixon_in_China_(Peter_Sellars,_2011).sub

Language:English
Subtitles:German, English, Spanish, French, Portuguese (vobsubs)

The post Peter Sellars – Nixon in China (2011) first appeared on Cinema of the World.