Don Giovanni (Andrea)

Since I have been very interested in transport as a dramatic and literary experience so far this semester, it is a little ironic that for this particular prompt, I can say very little about it. I didn’t experience transport or absorption while watching Don Giovanni, probably for two reasons that have nothing to do with the performance itself: I am not knowledgeable about or experienced in opera, and I was sitting in a very bad seat. I’m not sure whether this performance is to blame for my lack of transport, or whether I am just not a good opera viewer.  It could be that when I say that the opera didn’t overcome its structuring and artifice, all I am really saying is that I don’t like opera. I will be interested to hear what people who do know opera thought of this one.

Where I most enjoyed Don Giovanni, though, was in its humor. The scene where Zerlina convinces the injured Masetto to forgive her was one that for me finally rose above the structured nature of the opera. The characters were at the far end of stage right, which allowed me to see them clearly for this scene, as my balcony seat was on the far left. Masetto was lying on the ground and Zerlina was seated beside him, cradling his head. The music in her song was sweet and lively, and she slowly wins him over with humor as well as charm. I remember at one point she had crawled a little away from him, and as she sang about the good life they could have together, she shook her butt suggestively. She is very aware of the effect she is creating on Masetto, and by extension, the audience.

This scene overcame a structure that was for me foreign and artificial when I felt that the characters acknowledged the restraints of the form and embraced the humor that these limitations created, or when they did something that contradicted my preconceived ideas about opera as something grand and cultured and settled, to use Levin’s term. In this scene, it was Zerlina’s frank and funny sexuality that helped transport me; in other scenes it was Leporello’s commentary to the audience or Don Giovanni’s overly stylized and grandiose movements, both of which seemed to show that the performance was aware of its own artifice and taking advantage of it to create humor. Unlike Cavell, I felt the performance was most successful when it made me feel that I was in the presence of the audience at the same moment that they are in my presence.