Blog 8 - Don Giovanni - Derek

My understanding of the Cavell reading is that the spectator does nothing because “there is nothing and we know there is nothing we can do” (147) in the sense that “I have given over the time and space in which action is mine” (154). Cavell seems to be saying that this knowledge or understanding is what makes someone “an ideal auditor of serious drama” (154), unlike the yokel who stands up and tries to save Desdemona from Othello. The spectator must “acknowledge totally the fact and the true cause of … the suffering of others” (153). Cavell seems to say that the proper response is for the spectator to be “in awe before the fact that I cannot do and suffer what it is another’s to do and suffer” (154). And in feeling this sense of awe, the spectator is able to perceive and confirm their separateness, which in turn “is the unity of our condition” (154). Cavell seems to be suggesting that this process is important because it is allows spectators “a respite within which to prepare for [the] necessity” of acknowledging the pain of others outside the theater, i.e. in actuality, and by implication that one would take action to help others (149). Cavell explicitly warns that a failure to achieve this sense of awe increases the risk that “I continue my sponsorship of evil in the world, its sway waiting upon these forms of inaction” (154). The spectator, if properly experiencing the play, will leave with an increased ability to take positive action in the real world when faced with the pain and suffering of others.

I felt that the experience Cavell hopes all spectators would have when attending theater failed to occur for me at Don Giovanni in part because of the plot and in part because of the artifice of the mise-en-scène, which for me combine in the moment when the statue speaks in Act 2, Scene 3. Up to that point, I was willing to accept the highly stylized staging and acting, and to deal with the story itself, trying to extract the message, while also thinking about how I might react in the situations (thus approving or disapproving of certain characters’ decisions). As for the mise-en-scène, I was highly aware of the staging. I think the main reason for this was the opening scene in which a lace screen impacted direct visual access to the bedroom, while giant mirrors gave clear views from alternative angles. The actor playing Don Giovanni also engaged in highly stylized (unrealistic) movements as he walked around the bed. Moreover, the dialogue was almost always repeated three times, as well as offered in translation on the wall above the curtain over the stage. As a result of these factors, I did not get lost in the trance, did not fully sympathize with the characters. But I accepted them. I was willing to accept all the strange bits of theater, staging, and acting (which was stylized and kind of dreadfully bad if compared to what we expect from regular theater) which were part of the performance. I say I was willing to accept them because I thought they were supposed to be that way, as part of the conventions of opera (which I have no accurate sense of).

But the moment the statue spoke, I felt differently toward the opera. I suddenly found myself thinking about how much this opera resembled a morality play, and that it seemed to be instructing the audience in how to be good aristocrats and good people, and that its final message is that ultimately punishment should/will come not from outraged members of one's own social class or the lower classes, but from god. This is my main criticism of the story: Mozart brings in god to punish Don Giovanni, instead of making a political argument for the aristocracy to do a better job of policing their own -- or for the peasantry to follow through with their threats of violence against the aristocracy. Therefore, in Don Giovanni, it seems that ultimately the spectator is being discouraged from taking action in the real world. This feeling was unexpected, since I felt that through Act 2 Scene 2, the opera seems to be encouraging action. The story to that point explores the roles of the aristocracy and the peasantry in policing immoral behavior, first with the notion of the aristocracy being responsible for punishing one of its own, and next with the notion of the peasantry justifiably rising up when the aristocracy fails to enact that punishment. But as soon as the statue speaks in Act II.iii, the story removes all responsibility for action from humans and places it in the hands of god/the devil/the supernatural, and thus the spectator is excused from feeling the need to take action in real life, and really is encouraged to remain inactive in real life. Because of this, I question whether this production of Don Giovanni could effectively create the sense of awe that Cavell seems to feel is necessary for theater to have a positive effect on the spectator (in terms of encouraging action in the real world).