Principal Conductor Fabio Luisi leads his first Met performances of Mozart’s Don Giovanni in a new production directed by Tony Award winner Michael Grandage in his Met debut, on THIRTEEN’s Great Performances at the Met Sunday, February 26 at 12 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). In New York, THIRTEEN will air the program Thursday, February 23 at 9 p.m., with an encore presentation Sunday, February 26 at 12:30 p.m.
Watch a preview:
The program was originally seen live in movie theaters on October 29, 2011 as part of the groundbreaking The Met: Live in HD series, which transmits live performances to more than 1700 movie theaters and performing arts centers in 54 countries around the world.
Great Performances at the Met is a presentation of THIRTEEN for WNET, one of America’s most prolific and respected public media providers. For nearly 50 years, WNET has been producing and broadcasting national and local arts programming to the New York community.
The classic tale of lust, heartbreak, and revenge stars charismatic Polish baritone Mariusz Kwiecien in his first-ever Met performances of the notorious title character. For the first time with Don Giovanni at the Met, Luisi conducts the performance from a cembalo in the orchestra pit.
Latvian soprano Marina Rebeka and German soprano Mojca Erdmann make their Met debuts as two of Giovanni’s female conquests, Donna Anna and Zerlina, opposite distinguished Mozartean Barbara Frittoli as the fiery Donna Elvira. Tenor Ramón Vargas sings the role of Donna Anna’s fiancé, the nobleman Don Ottavio, and bass-baritone Luca Pisaroni is Giovanni’s hapless manservant Leporello. Joshua Bloom sings the shepherd Masetto and Štefan Kocán is the vengeful Commendatore.
Grandage, the longtime artistic director of London’s Donmar Warehouse, won a 2010 Tony Award for directing John Logan’s drama Red. Last season, he directed new productions of Billy Budd at Glyndebourne and Madama Butterfly at Houston Grand Opera. His other Broadway credits include Peter Morgan’s docudrama Frost/Nixon, a 2009 staging of Hamlet starring Jude Law, and an upcoming revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Evita in spring 2012.
Grandage’s design team includes his longtime collaborator Christopher Oram (sets and costumes), also a recent Tony Award winner for Red; lighting designer Paule Constable, who also designed this season’s Anna Bolena and Satyagraha; and choreographer Ben Wright, whose credits include numerous operas and musicals in England and Scotland. Oram and Wright make their Met debuts with this production.
Luisi, who was elevated to the position of Principal Conductor in September, led performances of Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro in the Met’s 2009-10 season and has a Met repertory that includes critically acclaimed performances of Verdi’s Don Carlo, Rigoletto, and Simon Boccanegra; Puccini’s La Bohème, Tosca, and Turandot; Richard Strauss’s Die Ägyptische Helena (the 2007 new production premiere), Elektra, and Ariadne auf Naxos; Berg’s Lulu; and Wagner’s Das Rheingold. He is also conducting Wagner’s Siegfried and Götterdämmerung, Massenet’s Manon, as well as a revival of Verdi’s La Traviata, all coming up on Great Performances at the Met.
Kwiecien has sung Don Giovanni at numerous international opera houses, including the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; Munich State Opera; San Francisco Opera; Santa Fe Opera; and Warsaw Opera, earning praise for his accomplished vocalism and seductive interpretation. Don Giovanni is his fourth leading role in a new production at the Met, following his performances as Dr. Malatesta in Don Pasquale (2006), and Enrico in Lucia di Lammermoor (2007), all seen on Great Performances at the Met, as well as Escamillo in Carmen (2009).
Rebeka sang the role of Donna Anna last season at the Deutsche Oper Berlin under the baton of Roberto Abbado. Fellow debuting artist Erdmann sang Zerlina at the 2011 Baden-Baden Festival in a production conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Frittoli last sang Donna Elvira at the Met in the 2008-09 season.
Vargas makes his Met role debut as Don Ottavio, a role he last performed in Covent Garden’s 2008-09 season. Bloom made his Met debut as Masetto in the 2008-09 season. Slovakian bass Kocán will make his Met role debut as the Commendatore.
Renée Fleming hosts. Barbara Willis Sweete directs the telecast.
Great Performances is funded by Vivian Milstein, the Philip and Janice Levin Foundation, and Annaliese Soros. Corporate support for Great Performances at the Met is provided by Toll Brothers, America’s luxury home builder®.
For the Met, Mia Bongiovanni and Elena Park are Supervising Producers, and Louisa Briccetti and Victoria Warivonchik are Producers. Peter Gelb is Executive Producer. For Great Performances, Bill O’Donnell is Series Producer; David Horn is Executive Producer.
je ne le vois sur l’horaire TV au Québec…
I was lucky enough to see this at the Met in NY and can only say it is brilliant. The singing, the acting and the staging are wonderful. It makes for a great evening. Thank you PBS and the Met.
Would like to see this but once again when I try to find out when it will be broadcast in the Washington DC area I get a run around on this site. It seems like PBS stations should be going out of their way to let fans know about this programs in advance instead of keeping us in the dark and that showing them at weird hours of the day without any fanfare.
Can it be so difficult in the digital age to do this? And you want me to contribute to your pledge drive ,right?
Are there any pbs stations near Philadelphia that will be showing this? I saw this in the theater and I would love to see it again and it seems some stations are just showing things like “Memphis” or reruns of that little girl singing.
Thanks!
Hi Victoria,
At first glance it doesn’t appear that WHYY-Philadelphia is airing any GP @ The Met programs in the near future. The month of March is pledge season for many PBS stations so the programming schedule will tend to include more “popular” fare such as our upcoming Phantom of the Opera production and repeats of similar pledge programming.
We’ll try and keep an eye out but you should check your local listings towards the end of March for upcoming Great Performances at the Met programming.
Thank you for your question.
I really have given up on my local PBS station. I have the same problem as many viewers. It is just about impossible to find the Met operas on my local PBS station. Not too many years ago we could count on viewing the Met’s operas according to the PBS schedule produced by Thirteen. But now why is PBS so poorly managed? How do they stay in business? Why should my tax dollars support this business? What good are the arts if you can’t be a part of the audience? You can tell that I am fed up with my local PBS station in Sacramento, Ca. I advise others NOT to support PBS. Nowadays technology makes it possible to have many more viable alternatives to participate in the arts.
Dear John,
Thank you for your comment. We understand that the lack of opera programming on some local affiliates can be quite frustrating. However, to blame PBS in general is like blaming the federal government for a state or local law regarding leaf disposal or a new trash ordinance. Please know that we work hard to have as many stations carry our programming as possible, but local affiliates have tremendous leeway in creating their own schedules not to mention the fact that operas are more difficult to schedule due to their extended length. We encourage you to contact your local affiliate to express your concerns regarding arts programming and in particular opera programming.
Again, thank you for your comments. We here at Great Performances and GP @ The Met thank you for your continued support.
Sincerely,
GP Team
To GP Team from PBS user Robert Perschmann, Minnesota: Team, you sound as frustrated as I am… so please consider my comments friendly: It seems a big problem is the separation of PBS from the stations. We viewers, we users, we tax payers, we people who WANT to pay taxes in support of PBS and the affiliates… we would like it if the affiliates had a lot less “LEEWAY” in creating their own schedules. We would like a NATIONAL PUBLIC BROADCAST SERVICE. I think that you know our country needs a true NATIONAL service. It seems you are saying it is not PBS that can fill that role. PBS can only “work hard” to convince affiliates to carry programming… and I guess we can say the affiliates have decided that Lawrence Welk fund raising is more fundamental than opera.
My local affiliate seems to be automated. My comments mean no more than a rain drop to the phone answering person. It looks to me as though automation is the best they can do. So, it must be a money problem, and a political problem. My intention is to do my best to help fix this mess. I think my congressional reps are where to start. Note to other viewers… threatening withdrawal of support is not the answer, we have to bring PBS much more political and financial support. There is a political party that prefers to destroy PBS for good. Vote against them if you care about a national broadcasting service that nurtures citizens.
I spend quite a lot of money on arts audio/video. I wish that I could pay for a service that was as good as PBS could be… if it were allowed to flourish as a national service for all American people. I WANT to be TAXED for a quality broadcast service.
They performed this and I missed it. Great. I hope to catch the rerun. The only thing I never could understand though — why didn’t the composer use the original name of the legend: DON JUAN?
Hi Keith,
The libretto was written for Mozart by Lorenzo da Ponte in 1787. Don Giovanni is just the Italian translation for Don Juan. Most opera librettos during that time were being composed in Italian as well as German and French. Hope this helps.
Thanks for your question.
Can I watch Don Giovanni on internet?
Hi Michelle,
The rights to the operas are retained by The Metropolitan Opera. Please visit The Met’s website for information about streaming of any Live in HD performances. We hope you stay tuned for further Great Performances at the Met.
Thank you for your question.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, PBS and OPB. During my life I have seen perhaps 12 performances of this opera, listened to and sung along with many recordings of the individual arias. Never has the complicated plot been so clear, the acting so good. or the singing so perfect. My first full Don Giovanni was, I think, the 1950s film starring Cesare Siepi. I recall saying to my mother that there was something essential about this work, something I wanted to understand. It took a lifetime of experience in the ways of men and women, of social tensions, of drama and music and poetry to come anywhere near such an understanding, but remembering that flip remark made so long ago I realized I could measure my life with this opera. You gave me a wonderful summing up, and a profound emotional and musical experience today.
Why didn’t they run this, or the awesome Anna Bolena, during pledge week? They’d have cleaned up! As it is, I will be sending a contribution and let PBS/OPB know that this is what I’d like to be watching. It’s almost like the 90s when we could count on an opera about once a month, and an outstanding Masterpiece Theatre series like Clarissa, Martin Chuzzlewit, Anna Karenina very regularly.
Any intention to broadcast The Enchanted Island? I saw it twice on Met Opera and was delighted each time.
Hi Michelle,
Information about this season’s lineup can be found in the “About the Series” tab above. There is a program description of our GP at the Met series within those pages.
Thank you for your question.
I’m very interested in purchasing a DVD or Blu-ray copy of Mozart’s Don Giovanni starring Mariusz Kwiecien. I hope there are plans to release it in the not to distant future. Thank you.
Hi Anthony,
We’re glad you enjoyed this year’s Don Giovanni as much as we did. The Metropolitan Opera retains the rights to the operas, so we advise that you check their website for DVD availability of recent GP @ the Met productions.
Hope you find this information helpful.
Best,
GP Team