Opera: New Orleans Opera\'s Don

Opera: New Orleans Opera's Don Giovanni have enjoyed operatic music for as long as I can remember, but had never attended a live opera until a few years ago. I found the experience less than wonderful; the effect of the lyrics being projected both took me out of the story and made me realize how trivial some of the things people were singing about really were. It was with some apprehension, then, that I agreed to accompany a group of friends to the New Orleans Opera's production of Don Giovanni on November 14 at the McAllister Auditorium. The first thing I noticed was the size of the theatre, which was much smaller than I was expecting. I was even more surprised by the opera itself and how much I enjoyed it.

First, there is a big difference in Italian and German opera. The only other live opera I've seen is La Boheme, and Mozart's Don Giovanni has a very different sound. There was an aggressiveness to the music and some of the singing that really appealed to me. What struck me the most, however, was the way the singers onstage related to each other and to the orchestra playing beneath them. There was an intensity in their focus, and the whole thing made more since as an exciting piece of drama than I had though it would. This production was set in the 1930s, and had a kind of gangster motif going on that really brought the music to life. I had made sure to read the story before hand so I wouldn't be distracted by the projected translation of the libretto, and I found that I didn't really need to know what the individual words meant -- the music and the acting carried the story just fine.