At the beginning of July, when Haute Couture Week had just kicked off in Paris, the city of Spoleto in Italy, was having its own chance to see some high fashion. No, there weren't any catwalk shows there, but, at the Spoleto Festival, there was a new staging of Mozart's Don Giovanni with costumes by fashion and interior designer Maurizio Galante.
Premiered in Prague in 1787, Don Giovanni: Il dissoluto punito (Don Giovanni, literally The Rake Punished or The Libertine Punished), with an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte, is based on the legends of a fictional libertine and seducer.
Directed by Giorgio Ferrara and with James Conlon as conductor, the Spoleto performance also boasted set designer Dante Ferretti and set decorator Francesca Lo Schiavo, reunited with Maurizio Galante, in a nutshell the same team behind last year's Mozart's Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro).
The story behind the opera revolves around Don Giovanni, a young, arrogant, and sexually promiscuous nobleman interpreted on the Spoleto stage by Dimitris Tiliakos.
Don Giovanni seduces and abuses whoever ends on his path: he has a loyal servant, Leporello (Andrea Concetti), who constantly gets mistreated by him; he kills the Commendatore (Antonio Di Matteo) causing his daughter Donna Anna (Lucia Cesaroni) to vow revenge with her fiancé, Don Ottavio (Brian Michael Moore); he has abandoned broken-hearted Donna Elvira (Davinia Rodriguez), and he keeps on trying to seduce Masetto's (Daniel Giulianini) girlfriend, Zerlina (Arianna Vendittelli). At the very end of the story Don Giovanni eventually finds his nemesis, a supernatural presence he can't kill, but who will outwit him, revenging all his victims.
Da Ponte's libretto was billed as a dramma giocoso, so a combination of serious and comic action, with some comedy and melodrama thrown in, without forgetting the supernatural elements at the end.
Galante's costumes were maybe less striking than the ones on last year's stage for Le Nozze di Figaro, but they went well with this version of Don Giovanni: leaving behind the bright pastel shades that characterised The Marriage of Figaro, Galante opted for more muted yet very symbolical colours.
For example Don Giovanni was clad in a dark rosé silk organza costume hinting at physical and psychological seduction, while Donna Elvira in lilac symbolised delicate femininity. Both characters belong to the upper classes, they can therefore afford coloured and expensive clothes, while Masetto and Zerlina donned white costumes.
The construction of most costumes was based on silhouettes from the 1700s, but Galante added modern elements and architectural features here and there: Zerlina wore a corset, but the breast area was softly and sensually highlighted by a pleated delicate motif, while her skirt was enriched by brocade and lace.
A final note for real costume fans: the costumes were made by historical Italian tailoring house Sartoria Farani, while the very desirable footwear - that included shiny silk flat boots and ballet-like slippers - came courtesy of Pompei 2000 Roma. The latter is the place to go for costume designers: Pompei 2000 has indeed got a long history in cinema, TV and opera/theatre productions and the company recently did footwear for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens, Carol and The Danish Girl, and for TV series Game of Thrones, The Crown, Penny Dreadful, The Young Pope and Outlander (just to mention a very few ones).
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