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I’ve been thinking a lot of the violence, aggression and transgressions that dominate global current affairs these days. Invasions, assassination attempts, bills being passed to limit refugee groups. The P-Diddy scandal. Within our shores, the political theatre unfolding in an election year is also hard to ignore, and even harder to dissect. S Iswaran x Ong Beng Seng. Raeesha Khan x WP. It is always easier to scapegoat one person (or party).But for every one Don Giovanni that exists, there exists a structure, a group of complicit enablers and benefactors who remain unseen and unpunished. Don Giovanni reminds us that each of us possess all that is human – the bad as much as the good.

Structurally, the Don Giovanni libretto feels simple, almost to a fault. The main dramatic action, if reduced: there’s a villain, kill the villain. There are also other plot devices that require careful navigation: How is Don Giovanni always able to escape? Why does Leporello stick around? How is it that Elvira can’t tell the difference between Leporello and Don Giovanni simply because of a cloak switch? What is the character and musical chiaroscuro of Zerlina and Masetto? Why does Anna and Ottavio just sing about revenge? A valiant sword fight between a protagonist and the villain would have been nice and dramatic…but there isn’t a protagonist.

This work turns on the characters that surround Don Giovanni; and the fact that there is a massive failure of justice in world of Don Giovanni. In fact, a justice system is blatantly missing. So without a formal system, the system of justice rests then on the body politic. But the body politic, through in-action, demanding someone else does it, or hoping he will repent and return to being a compliant husband, is also largely feckless.

Love and Lust

There is a chiaroscuro between Lust and Love in this opera. Love features but it’s twisted. Anna and Ottavio never really get to consummate their love. For all the beautiful melodies that they are given, their Love never ever blossoms or becomes gallant or interesting that one might aspect from classical stories. It’s a shallow love, all talk, no action.

On the other hand, Elvira is all action. She chases Don Giovanni, repeatedly attempting to redeem him. Felicia, the singer playing Elvira, shared, I don”t feel any love for Don Giovanni. She was referring to her character. But what IS love? I have felt such strong obsessive, possesive feelings another, yet I hesitate, like Felicia, to give it the name Love now. But maybe it was. Love can’t be apologetic. Elvira’s love on the other hand is stupid, impulsive, and obsessed. Those words could be relabelled as “blind, courageous and undying.”

Of all the characters, I am most fascinated by Zerlina. Here is a young woman who, on her wedding day, gives in to the advances of Don Giovanni – including a proposal. I don’t think it was love that was driving Zerlina. Here is a woman with agency, and desire to take charge of her life. Unfortunately, she gets implicated, somehow. Da Ponte isn’t very clear on her relationship with the nobles aside from the dramatic device of being raped by Don Giovanni in the Act 1 finale. I’ve tried to plug by suggesting a “friend”ship with Elvira following her aria Ah fuggi il traditor.

Zerlina’s aria Batti, batti o bel Masetto is a disturbing aria. In asking for forgiveness, she asks Masetto to beat her, to pull her hair, to gouge her eyes out. The melody is so beautiful but that lyrics are terrifying and violent. Is Love violent? I end this aria with Masetto slapping Zerlina – an action and a foreshadow.

Immediately in the next scene,, her husband and supposed protector, instead of keeping her safe from Don Giovanni, hides while she has to fend for herself. If he had just left with her, she would not have been assaulted. In this staging, I use Vedrai Carino, Zerlina’s final aria, to offer her an opportunity to decide whether to stay or leave Masetto. We end it with her strangling Masetto, aborting only it just as he’s about to suffocate. She too is capable of murder, when pushed.

The Hand of the Director

In this staging of Don Giovanni, which I’ve set in the now, no one is innocent. I have omitted a nameless chorus, focusing solely on the named characters to construct the body politic of Don Giovanni’s society. Everyone is complicit, everyone has to face a reckoning.

Three heavy directorial actions have been imposed on Da Ponte’s libretto: All characters attend the last dinner scene, all are silent witnesses to the judicial hand of of the Commendatore; all couples are heavily pregnant; and that includes Leporello. Don Giovanni maybe gone, but the consequences and responsibility of action are borne by the body politic.

We punish errant politicians, vilify scandalous celebrities, and hang criminals but we are the body politic. We accept the narrative that by simply eradicating these illward individuals justice is preserved. We shouldn’t. There are systems we need to interrogate. Giovanni is because he can be. Existing structures nurture and allow his existence, Even though gone, he will live on in the structures that remain.

Deep red feature in Syadiq’s set design. Monolithic columns hold up an imaginary roof, the set is kept stark, organised according to Wild Rice’s thrust stage. In a thrust, the audience is very much part of Don Giovanni’s world – they are implicated. The characters float on a surface of red with only the orchestra at the back. The music, like the conductor, is very much visible to everyone. Gabriel’s lighting design move from intimate to grotesque, casting a different light on the beautiful arias, revealing violent undertones. The space is very psychological.

A Don Giovanni in all of us

We had a full house for our opening. I think I managed to achieved sorta an Artaudian effect within the dark comedy, well, at least for our audiences blinded by the castration of censored theatre. Don Giovanni is in the genre of opera buffa. And I think it works brilliantly in that genre. Historically, Don Giovanni has taken on this sheath of seriousness, but I am exploring the line between comedy and tragedy – the comedy in the tragedy – with the comedy and tragedy driven by each character’s Machiavellian wants. Don Giovanni, our anti-hero, is actually the simplest of the lot – he just wants to have sex, drink and eat.

‘Who doesn’t?

Remember that the Standford Prison Experiment? Where “normal” citizens when put into positions of power and with full freedom, became increasingly brutal in their abuse. Or the Milgram experiment? Where in the presence of an authority figure, who could absolve responsibility, participants administered lethal electric shocks to a fictional participant?

In working on Don Giovanni, I have come to know the ruthless and ugliest side of being human, the side when unleashed and unrestraint is both freeing but also predatory. It is side that we all have in us. In the same vein that we have enacted justice and moral structures to restrain the beast, we have also created those structures that enable the beast. Admittedly, this Jekyll and Hyde view is macabre and pessimistic. But I think that’s what makes Don Giovanni an exciting work – oscillating between beautiful harmonies (the best of us) and horrible actions (the worst of us)