I'm off to see the WNO's production of Mozart's Don Giovanni tonight. I'm quite looking forward to it. It's on at the WMC in the Bay. I've never seen this opera, despite having played Don Giovanni for the WNO back in 1984.[Pauses, allowing his audience to digest this.]
In actual fact, I was a drama student in Cardiff at the time and the WNO wanted actors to walk the stage for their technicians to focus the lights etc. The world of opera was so far away from the world of theatre I was used to: in theatre actors were expected to turn up for technical rehearsals whilst opera stars paid actors to do it for them. My abiding memory is running around the the stage in a red shirt, twanging swords sticking out of the rock on the lip of a volcano whilst the director repeatedly bellowed, "Schnell!"
The director's name was Ruth Berghaus, married to Paul Dessau, friend and colleague of Bertolt Brecht and, at one time, director of the Berliner Ensemble. I was studying Epic Theatre and Brechtian techniques at the time, so, to be shouted at by this legend, I felt, was an honour.
The more she shouted, the more I smiled.
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