Don Giovanni (Whitney)

Like Cody, I want to try to take a quick moment to hash out what the notion of “transport” might mean for Cavell. It seems to have less to do with intense emotional investment, in the sense that we are asked or come to feel suffering and pain for the person on stage, and more to do with the emotional state we find ourselves in once we realize both that we are allowing the suffering of the character on stage to take place and just how we are in a position to allow the suffering to occur. As Cavell points out, when Othello begins killing Desdemona, “there is nothing and we know there is nothing we can do. Tragedy is meant to make sense of that condition” (147).

Don Giovanni is really the first opera I’ve seen (unless you count Andrew Lloyd Weber which, I believe, real opera-goers never do), so I can’t presume to make any claims about whether or not opera in general can have the kind of transporting effect Levin and Cavell seem to be discussing in different ways. In terms of this particular production, though, I was transported more by the structure of the apparatus than by its content. For me, the element of the production that purged my “attachment from everything but the present” was the mirrored backdrop (153). On a quick side note, after reading Dorothy’s post, I’m disappointed to admit that I didn’t even think about the mirrors in relation to Don Giovanni and his narcissistic view of the world (but it’s a great point and I would have enjoyed adding that layer of analysis to my viewing of this production).

To me, though, the mirrors were much more significant due to their constant calling out of the structure of the production. In other words, through the mirrors I could not only see the framing of the stage and the audience reflected back onto the stage itself, but also the motion of the conductor and the front of the orchestra, the back of the actors, and the actors’ shadows cast back onto the stage from the front spotlights. The effect was incredibly thrilling and, admittedly, I was often pulled out of the action of the story itself because of my desire to watch the production from this seemingly alternative perspective the director was offering. I especially loved watching the motions of the conductor from the front, a perspective an audience member wouldn’t normally be privy to without the mirroring effect. Earlier I suggested that this element of the production pulled me out of the action of the play, but that’s not to suggest that I, therefore, wasn’t transported during the experience. I was transported by my awe of the complex and grand structure of the operatic apparatus that I saw, literally, mirrored before my eyes. It actually enabled the recognition of my separation from the actors and their presence within time and space (so important for Cavell’s notion of tragedy and our experience of it), even as it put me on stage within the space of the actors via the mirror.

Again, I can’t speak to the transporting effect of any general aspects of opera, but this particular performance of Don Giovanni seems to suggest that rather than needing to overcome its structuring and patent artifice in order to transport its audience, opera’s calling out of its own structuring can provide an alternate way for the audience to be transported? A different methodology but one that can, ultimately, produce the same result.