Don Giovanni
Opera in two acts, in Italian, with Hungarian, English and Italian subtitles
Schedule
There are works that are eternal, that cannot be bored, that cannot be performed enough times. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Don Giovanni is one such work - it is not for nothing that it is known as the 'opera of operas'. And some productions, even if they were written decades ago, are still relevant and worth revisiting. One such production is Don Giovanni, directed by Claus Guth at the 2008 Salzburg Festival, which has since been staged in Berlin, Madrid, Amsterdam - and will be performed at the Opéra Bastille in Paris and the Hungarian State Opera House in the 2023/24 season. Claus Guth imagined Don Giovanni in a forest. The forest has always been an inspiring setting for dramatic action, love, death, getting lost, fear, growing up - think of the many folk tales, including A Midsummer Night's Dream! In Guth, the ever-rotating, terrifying yet wittily playful forest setting is less a dream than a nightmare, where we witness the title character's last love adventures as a hallucination before his death.
Hungarian State Opera
The Hungarian State Opera House is the only theatre in Hungary with a large company, specialising in operas and ballets. The building is one of Budapest's most important 19th century monuments. It was built in neo-Renaissance style according to the plans of Miklós Ybl. The richly decorated interior was designed by renowned Hungarian artists, including Mór Than, Károly Lotz and Bertalan Székely.
