Sex-crazed business man? Gay icon? Drug addict or anti-imperialist cipher? The many faces of Don Giovanni
In the Don Giovanni that has just opened in Paris, the eponymous hero has become an irredeemable sex pest of a businessman. Too much power and sex has corroded his soul. Perhaps you work with him. Perhaps you are him. At the end, in his nocturnal office, Giovanni is stabbed through the heart by the co-worker he sexually assaulted in act one, thrown through a window by a crowd of downtrodden cleaners, at least one of whom he tried to grope, and then accompanied to hell by the rotting corpse of the CEO he murdered at the outset. Twenty-first century moral? Don't stay late at the office.
The desperate Don's comeuppance, though, strikes me as unfair. As Kierkegaard noted in Either/Or, Don Giovanni is the opera's erotically animating presence. "His passion resonates everywhere...
In the Don Giovanni that has just opened in Paris, the eponymous hero has become an irredeemable sex pest of a businessman. Too much power and sex has corroded his soul. Perhaps you work with him. Perhaps you are him. At the end, in his nocturnal office, Giovanni is stabbed through the heart by the co-worker he sexually assaulted in act one, thrown through a window by a crowd of downtrodden cleaners, at least one of whom he tried to grope, and then accompanied to hell by the rotting corpse of the CEO he murdered at the outset. Twenty-first century moral? Don't stay late at the office.
The desperate Don's comeuppance, though, strikes me as unfair. As Kierkegaard noted in Either/Or, Don Giovanni is the opera's erotically animating presence. "His passion resonates everywhere...
- 4/12/2012
- by Stuart Jeffries
- The Guardian - Film News
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