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Don't listen to the negative reviews

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

DON GIOVANNI as a Blaxploitation-gangster flick (or an episode of KOJAK or Miami VICE)! You'll love it or you'll hate it. Elizabeth Schwarzkopf hated it and said Peter Sellars should be in prison for doing it. I loved it. And I think Mozart would have loved it too--he almost always went out of his way to make his work appealing to ordinary people.Besides the modern 1970s/1980s TV-type staging and casting and costumes, this performance is excellent musically AND dramatically. More than most performances it shows the interactions between the characters, and the passions they feel. Some of the nuances are subtle, for instance, in the Act 2 trio where the Don re-seduces Donna Elvira ("Ah taci, ingiusto core"), when the Don sings about how talented he is at seduction ("Piu fertile talento del mio no non si da!"), his face registers distress, not pride or triumph. In normal performances he's exulting in his skill; here he's lamenting that he can only receive love by USING his skill.

I am no fan of Peter Sellars. If you are not American (I am Chinese Australian), the various demands by the director made of the viewer to culturally "re-locate" can be really difficult.The violence with which Mr. Sellars has savaged a trio of the most perfect works of art (Mozart's Don Giovanni, Cosi Fan Tutte and the Marriage of Figaro) has been extreme and not at all equally successfully."Marriage" was perhaps the most innovative, setting the action in the penthouse of Trump Tower, with a hapless Countess at the mercy of a domestically and potentially fatally violent and jealous husband. Sellars's treatment of "Cosi" is so obnoxious I still have dyspepsic attacks just thinking about it. He absolutely buries any vestige of Mozart's great humanity.His (mal/mis)treatment of possibly the greatest work of music theatre, Don Giovanni is only slightly less reprehensible. Manholes and the all-too obvious metaphor of the sewer aside, the one absolutely brilliant masterstroke is casting two brothers (twins?) equally good singers and sexy to boot, as master and servant, and so speaking volumes without any production gimmicks needed. The suggestion that Man is still (the same) Man despite accidents of birth, regardless of social position and the license that status gives, is, one has to admit, quite stunning.However one brilliant insight cannot redeem the rest.

A brave attempt to assimilate the idea and story of Mozart's masterwork into the 1980's. It has inherent value in the decision to cast twins as the strange doppelganger of Leporello and the Don and of course the arresting setting of the whole opera in contemporary urban America.There is a problem for me and a quite significant one at that; a surly lack of good humour. The characterisations become monochromatic. Love and forgiveness begin to feel like last resorts as a result. An interesting and watchable shift in this respect is the increased importance of Donna Elvira (the mercurial Lorraine Hunt Lieberson).Key to Sellars' recording is that it is intended specifically for film, with no attempt to play to an auditorium. This makes it more idiomatic on-screen, although as I say, surly and introverted. Bold and flawed. 4/10

Peter Sellars has taken Mozart's "Don Giovanni" and set it in modern New York City ... and it still works, which just goes to show how timeless the genius of Mozart really is. But Sellars true genius was in casting African-American twins to play the parts of Don Giovanni and his servant, Leporello ... there is a scene where they change places, disguised as each other, and you don't have to suspend your disbelief to enjoy it. There is a scene where they discuss their plans for the evening over a meal ... the fact that they are sitting on a curb eating burgers from McDonalds does not get in the way at all.For any inner-city teacher who would like to introduce their students to opera, seeing two vital, young black males singing music that's 200 years old, and in Italian (with English subtitles), should be an eye-opening experience. The multiracial cast showcases many splendid young (and at the time, unknown) voices selected only for their talent, and demonstrates that opera is really for everyone.I'm glad that I taped it from PBS years ago, because it hasn't been released yet on VHS or DVD. <sigh!>