Sharpenicity

Don Giovanni lives! There is nothing even remotely retro about Mozart’s masterpiece Don Giovanni.  Neither the music nor the plot gets old in this Hit Parade top ten of operas currently performed.    So when the InSeries adopted a new setting, with the libertine noblemen re-incarnated as a 1920’s American religious revivalist,  the music and the story line were sure to work.  Other “collaborations” of composers and modern producers —despite centuries apart—have worked well in the past.    But more than that, the InSeries production underlines that the plot of this opera is still very much with us. Who to believe: the charismatic preacher who is a serial rapist: his diary of conquests is not unlike the files of the newspaper clippings of their victims or other trophies that police uncover that predators keep.  Or  Sister Elvira, a deserted woman:  Is she a mad stalker or a victim who no one will believe?   Then there is Sister Anna whose father has been killed by Don Giovann