No other opera work has probably been given more flattering opinions ever since the beginning than Mozart-Da Ponte's masterpiece Don Giovanni. In fact, the majority of opera enthusiasts would maintain that it is the greatest written and performed work of operatic art forms of all times. Its librettist Da Ponte, with whom the wonder boy from Salzburg had already triumphed in The Marriage of Figaro, found the story for their second opera in the then quite popular interpretation from the 17th century The Trickster of Seville and the Stone Guest (1630) by Spanish playwright Tirso de Molina, in its operatic interpretation by Giuseppe Gazzaniga, and above all in Molière's hero Don Juan.

The myth about the dissolute seducer has been inspiring philosophers, writers and composers until present times as well as opening many a question about inner freedom and freedom of thought. Mozart (1756–1791) composed his Don Giovanni – mostly presented on our stages under the title of Don Juan –, for the Prague Theatre, where he experienced a smashing success at its premiere on 29th October 1787. For the piece's staging in Vienna, less than a year later, the composer slightly changed the score, and thus launched an infinite polemic about the final version of his masterpiece. And it is exactly with this operatic work that we are pursuing in our programme further on (at least in terms of its content) the so called »line of classicism in opera« (Gluck, Orpheus and Eurydice; Mozart, The Marriage of Figaro; Beethoven, Fidelio).

The newest staging is entrusted to Diego de Brea, Slovenian director of middle generation, who has already directed for the Ljubljana Opera Mozart-Streul's piece Papageno Plays the Magic Flute. Diego de Brea has been lately also asserting himself – both as a theatre and opera director – abroad and receiving an enviable number of prestigious national and international awards for his artistic work.

Tatjana Ažman