Word: losey
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...seems that Reviewer Christopher Porterfield went to the film Don Giovanni [Nov. 26] with a preconceived notion of how it should be played-with an emphasis on the lighter side. This is, of course, a perfectly valid interpretation. However, Joseph Losey chose to look at the dark side of Don Giovanni. You must remember that this work, with its terribly ambiguous juxtaposition of good and evil, is open to as many interpretations as there are productions...
Would Shakespeare have approved of Olivier's Hamlet! Would Mozart have liked Joseph Losey's film version of Don Giovanni? Who knows? Who cares...
...this Don Giovanni a great advantage over live opera, but pose a danger as well. By offering an instant, easily consulted libretto, they restore to the recitative sections the cynical bite normally lost on English-speaking audiences. Future directors. though, would do well to find themselves better translators than Losey's. As the spirits of hell clamor for the Don's soul, for example, he shouts, "They agitate my viscera...
...certainly prevent it from bringing opera to a mass audience, and--despite all that film offers opera listeners, financially and technically--it's doubtful the opera movie will ever go over big. Audiences today have trouble sitting through the two-and-a-half hour extravagant spectacle of Apocalypse Now; Losey's three hours of set pieces won't fare any better...
...people who will go see Losey's film are the same people who buy seats for the Metropolitan Opera when it visits Boston each spring, not the great unwashed "masses" who couldn't care less about opera, who would rather see the latest Airport movie than Don Giovanni--or, better yet, go home and turn on the television. To "Mork and Mindy...