UCLA Performing Arts The cast of "Don Giovanni" is made
up entirely of UCLA music students who perform tonight and Saturday
night.
By Howard Ho
Daily Bruin Contributor
In Peter Shaffer’s “Amadeus,” Salieri,
Mozart’s rival and admirer, calls “Don Giovanni”
the great composer’s darkest opera. Indeed, most productions
treat it as such. However, UCLA Opera’s stage director Frans
Boerlage begs to differ.
“As Mozart and librettist da Ponte called it an opera
buffa, or light opera, I want to stress the light points of
it,” Boerlage said about his new production of “Don
Giovanni” being performed at Royce Hall tonight and
Saturday.
With William Vendice conducting the UCLA Philharmonic Orchestra,
the new incarnation of Mozart’s timeless opera promises to
surprise even seasoned opera-goers.
“Don Giovanni” is the Italian name of the infamous
seducer Don Juan. The opera takes place in Seville, Spain in the
1600s. As the scene opens, Don Giovanni has just killed a military
commander, the father of one of his thousands of lovers.
After a series of mistaken identities and romances, the Don,
played by Injoon Jang, jokingly invites a statue of the dead
commander to a dinner. Surprisingly, the statue comes to life and
accepts the invitation. But when it arrives that night, the statue
sends the immoral Don straight to Hell. Though this may not sound
like the stuff of comedies, Boerlage, who was the stage director of
USC’s opera department for 22 years, finds plenty of places
to flesh out this interpretation.
“Donna Elvira, in my version, is a comical
character,” Boerlage said about the woman who thinks
she’s the only one for the Don, but who is in fact only one
of his many conquests. “Leporello, the servant of Don
Giovanni, is obviously light relief, and I want to underline that.
Immediately after the murder (of the commander), the dialogue
between the Don and his servant is rather lighthearted.
There’s ample way to make it not so dark.”
One way Boerlage decided to do this was by including a rarely
performed scene.
“It’s never done in America, I’ve never done
it, and no one has ever seen it,” Boerlage said.
“It’s a duet between Zerlina and Leporello. It’s
totally superfluous, but it gives us a chance to have some
comedy.
“If people don’t know the opera they won’t
have any idea it’s an added scene,” he continued.
However, “(Those who are familiar with it) suddenly sit up
thinking, “˜What is this?'”
Boerlage updated the opera from the 17th century to the turn of
the 20th century, and used pantomime during the opera’s
overture to introduce the characters and the situation. The sword
fight that Mozart implied with his overture becomes a full-fledged
duel, staged to the music.
“I have a big pantomime on the overture. Otherwise, I
always feel that you jump into the story without knowing who is
who,” Boerlage said.
Though Boerlage has already directed the opera five times, he
believes his interpretation has become even clearer.
“It’s not an easy opera to bring to an audience,
because it’s not an easy pleaser … Most of my colleagues
won’t do it,” Boerlage said.
Perhaps the most difficult part was assembling the cast entirely
out of UCLA music students. Boerlage was not fully satisfied with a
single cast, so many of the parts are double-cast. Don Giovanni
(Jang), Don Ottavio (Bong-won Kye), Masetto (Patrick Bell) and the
commander (Peter Artherton) will be played by the same person on
both nights.
On separate nights, Susan Koo and Ciera Lamborn share Zerlina,
Duana Demus and Rebecca Tomlinson share Donna Anna, Sara Edwards
and Jordan Gumucio share Donna Elvira, and Andrew Ahlquist and
Cedric Berry share Leporello. Only Berry and Artherton are not UCLA
students.
For Jang, a vocal music doctoral student, “Don
Giovanni” is a matter of great pride.
“It’s a great opportunity to prove UCLA’s
music department, to make this great opera available. It’s
not an easy opera to (put on),” Jang said. “Other music
schools can’t do that because they don’t have enough
singers or money.”
Indeed, “Don Giovanni” is not a chorus opera with
several stars and a large chorus. Boerlage said the most complex
part of the opera was coordinating the details, because even the
small parts can take center stage.
“All the roles are difficult to sing,” said Jang.
“Even though the title is “˜Don Giovanni,’ he is
not doing everything alone. I can’t make this opera on my
own. Leporello has to sing more than Don Giovanni, so the Don is
not the only star here.”
Boerlage enjoyed the humility of Jang and other cast members,
since it allowed his vision of a funnier, more accessible
“Don Giovanni” to come into life.
“When you do it with big stars, which I’ve done, you
have much less time and you have to take their personality into
consideration and work toward them,” Boerlage said.
“It’s hard to get a homogenous staging, and I’ve
been lucky to get a cast that’s sympathetic to my
view.”
With longtime collaborator Vendice, who heads the music staff of
the L.A. Opera, Boerlage hopes to have achieved something quite
different in his sixth outing of the Mozart masterpiece, proving
that even old works can have new subtleties and relevancies. One
would think, however, that after six times, “Don
Giovanni” has gotten easier for Boerlage to produce.
“No, it never gets any easier,” Boerlage said
emphatically.
OPERA: “Don Giovanni” plays
tonight, Jan. 19 at 7:30 and Sunday, Jan. 21 at 3 p.m. Tickets are
$25 and $15, $9 for seniors or students with ID. For ticket
information, contact the Central Ticket Office at (310)
825-2101.