There are works of art that are timeless, that you cannot get tired of, that cannot be performed too many times. Don Giovanni by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is no exception – it is no coincidence that it is known as the “opera of operas”. And some productions, even if they were staged several decades ago, are still relevant and worth revisiting. One such production is Don Giovanni, directed by Claus Guth for the 2008 Salzburg Festival, which has since been staged in Berlin, Madrid, Amsterdam – and will be performed not only at the Opéra Bastille in Paris but also at the Hungarian State Opera in the 2023/24 season. Claus Guth envisioned Don Giovanni in a forest. The forest has always been an inspiring setting for dramatic action, love, death, getting lost, fear, growing up – just think of A Midsummer Night's Dream, among many other folktales! Guth’s ever-rotating, terrifying yet wittily playful forest setting is less a dream than a nightmare, where we witness the title character's last love stories as a hallucination before his death.

The copyright of the Salzburg Festspiele's production is held by the Staatsoper Unter den Linden.

 

Director: Claus Guth
Assistant director: Caroline Staunton
Set and costume designer: Christian Schmidt
Assistant set designer: Christian Tabakoff
Assistant costume designer: Ramses Sigl, Michael Schmieder
Choreographer: Ulrike Zimmermann-Mattar, Marion Benages
Lighting designer: Olaf Winter
Dramaturg: Ronny Dietrich
Hungarian translation by: Éva Lax
Revival director: Mária Harangi, Albert Mányik
English translation by: Barry James Woods