Director Michael Morgan has set his Don Giovanni where a modern Don Juan might well be found any day of the week. “I didn't necessarily set out to place the opera in a nightclub,” says Morgan. “We had talked about doing another Mozart opera and having it take place in a single room. Although we didn't choose that opera, it struck me then that Don Giovanni could be placed in essentially one location -- a modern day nightclub -- and that all the relationships make perfect sense. ‘Making sense’ is really important to me -- that absolutely everything make sense all the way through. I just don't get those stagings where you have a whole chorus standing around holding machine guns, while the principals are having a swordfight. It just makes no sense at all. While opera is not reality, there should be a general feeling that these things could happen in this time and place.” Morgan's staging sets up the characters so they relate to each other in exactly the way the opera intended. For example, club manager Leporello works for the owner, Don Giovanni -- a demanding boss who imperiously orders him about. He forces Leporello's complicity, even in his seductions, every one of which notably fails during the opera. And while the Commendatore is not a nobleman, the protective relationship he has with his daughter, Donna Anna, explains his violent reactions against Giovanni on her behalf. “My goal was to set up a context (the club) in which all of the characters' actions would make sense. It is therefore natural that Masetto is the bartender and Zerlina is a waitress. Other than that it's in modern dress, what you see -- the action -- is pretty traditional. Generally, Don Giovanni is rather dark, and has lovely qualities, but it is clear that Mozart and Da Ponte intended this as a comic piece, and not even a highbrow one at that. At the time they set the story to music, Don Juan had long been looked upon as a low-class entertainment pandering to the masses. We forget that because the music is so very great. But, as with the comic elements in The Magic Flute we should try to get back into the spirit of the thing.”
