My wife Beth and I attended opening night of Opera Theatre of St. Louis, which was "Don Giovanni." I've loved this opera ever since purchasing the Karl Böhm live recording (with Sherrill Milnes in the title role, along with Walter Berry, Peter Schreier, Edith Mathis, and others) way back in the spring of 1982 at the old Chapel Square Mall in New Haven, CT. In spite of reviews like http://www.allmusic.com/album/mozart-don-giovanni-w145607/review, I still enjoy this recording.
The Opera Theatre production featured a wonderful cast and, interestingly, a variety of costume styles. The principles were in modern dress (and the Don killed the Commandatore with a handgun), while the chorus wore shabby period clothes. That shabbiness worked effectively when some of the chorus returned to pitch the Don into Hell, which appeared then retreated through a crack in the rear wall.
One of the local newspapers provided a good preview article: http://www.stlbeacon.org/arts-life/21-music/110361-don-giovanni-kicks-off-opera-theatre-season I've not read much Kierkegaard (much Karl Barth, who was early influenced by him). But knowing of Kierkegaard's passion for the opera, I found two interesting quotes, one from Maria G. Amilburu's essay "Kierkegaard's Aesthetic Realm of Existence," in Understanding Human Nature: Examples from Philosophy and the Arts (http://www.bu.edu/wcp/MainAnth.htm):
"Kierkegaard maintains that Don Giovanni has all the exuberance and primitive impulse of man before self-awareness has dawned: he lives for the immediate satisfaction of his senses, and is the embodiment of the kind of person who can only see him/herself in terms of the senses. Living for the moment entails a negation of the ability to reflect, which is characteristic of the spirit. This means that Don Giovanni lacks inner life: he simply enjoys himself, flits from one pleasure to another, one conquest to another, as Leporello tells us in his Aria. His life is a flow, but without a flowing subject. It is like the bubbles in the wine which gives its name to another of the best-known pieces of the Opera. The aesthetic existence is thus an inconsistent kind of phenomenon which wafts here and there in an evanescent world. This is why Kierkegaard says that the best way of expressing the levity of the aesthetic existence is through music: pure experience which only exists in the present."
And then, here is a quote from the essay "Kierkegaard, Don Giovanni, and the Messiah" by Martin Winer (http://www.ourexpose.com/139759-Kierkegaard-Don-Giovanni-and-the-Messiah.html):
"Both Kierkegaard and Don Giovanni had a fundamental lack of faith: Not a lack of faith in God, but a lack of faith in humanity. We'll soon see that the two are related however. What is the fundamental value of faith to begin with? Faith allows the human mind to make decisions in the absence of perfect information and absolute certainty. Faith in its purest form is essential to daily living. How could we board a plane, drive to work or go about our daily business without a certain faith that the odds are in our favour that everything is going to be alright? I'm certain that were Don Giovanni alive today, he'd happily board a plane to fly to his love of the week. He would have faith in the plane ride, which could theoretically cost him his life, but he wouldn't have the faith in the woman to truly love her, even when there is no mortal danger. This irony speaks wondrously of the innate human ability to recognize that the soul is the most precious thing of all. Don Giovanni was a duelist who commonly took risks with his life but never risked to expose his soul."
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