DON GIOVANNI

In the organizer's words:

He is probably the most famous playboy of all time: Don Giovanni. According to his servant Leporello, he is said to have conquered 1,003 women in Spain alone. But who is Don Giovanni really? "Chi son io tu non saprai", seems to be his answer to Donna Anna at the beginning of the play, after he has tried to win her over by force. "Who I am, you will not know." In fact, his character defies any precise definition; he always remains changeable and unpredictable. For Don Giovanni is a character without consciousness. He is the principle that raises human questions about good and evil, desire and duty, transgression and punishment. A few moments later, a duel escalates between Don Giovanni and the Commendatore, Donna Anna's father, which ends fatally for the latter. Don Giovanni, however, feels no remorse and throws himself into new love adventures full of zest for life. Donna Elvira and Zerlina are to be his next victims. But the net of his pursuers is tightening ever tighter ...
After "Le nozze di Figaro", "Don Giovanni" is the second major collaboration between Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his librettist Lorenzo da Ponte. The premiere on October 29, 1787 at the Prague National Theatre was so popular that Mozart himself reported in a letter that it was "loudly applauded" that Emperor Joseph II expressed the express wish that the opera also be performed in Vienna. After Mozart had made some revisions, "Don Giovanni" celebrated its Viennese premiere on May 7, 1788. Da Ponte's libretto is based on the work by Tirso de Molina, on which Molière's "Don Juan" is also based. But it is above all Mozart's music that lends the plot a metaphysical dimension, making Don Giovanni the embodiment of the senses - an impulse for life itself.

Following her successful production of "La Cenerentola", director Cecilia Ligorio returns to the Cologne Opera together with her team and questions the myth of "Don Giovanni" in a contemporary way from a female perspective. The celebrated Mozart conductor Tomáš Netopil brings the score to life musically on the podium of the Gürzenich Orchestra.