Mozart - Don Giovanni (Euro Arts, Salzburger Festspiele, Unitel Classica)

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Wild animals live in the woods. Robbers hide there. Mystery is at home there. And, when the woods are on the stage of Salzburg’s Haus für Mozart, a notorious ladies’ man and his unsavoury accomplice can also find shelter there. For here, in the dense forest planted by director Claus Guth, is the home of the rugged macho Don Giovanni, who, assisted by Leporello, lures the ladies with the heady scent of danger. In Guth’s almost cinematic Salzburg Festival production, every character in Mozart’s most realistic opera seems to carry a back-story of thwarted love and frustration. Everyone appears to be seeking either salvation or damnation in the woods – a compelling concept that removes the opera from its traditional pseudo-Seville squares and palaces.

01. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Don Giovanni, K527