Don Juan and Casanova are frequently confused because both are known as womanizers, and because in Italian they share the first name, Giovanni. But there the similarities end. Don Juan, or Don Giovanni as Mozart calls him in his humorous but dark opera (dramma giocoso) with Italian lyrics and a Spanish setting, is a fictional character, while Casanova was very much a real person, born in Venice.

The folk legend of Don Juan, an unrepentant Spanish libertine, goes back to the early 1600s. This chap, whom today we would throw into jail as a sexual molester and rapist, was first treated to a formal literary setting around 1630 by one Tirso de Molina. Molière wrote about him in a French version, while in England in the same century Sir Aston Cokayne and Thomas Shadwell took up his tale. Casanova, meanwhile, was not born until 1725 in Venice, almost a century after Don Juan's first literary appearance. He died in Dux, Bohemia, in 1798. In 1787, Casanova, who was educated at the university of Padua and had various occupations in many countries, met Mozart in Prague. There he attended the premiere performance of the opera, Don Giovanni. Casanova, among whose amours belongs Madame de Pompadour, was a friend of Mozart's librettist, Lorenzo Da Ponte, and it is believed that he even wrote a few lines of the libretto. Although Casanova also was a rake, who swung both ways, he had an abiding faith in God and would not have tempted fate in the manner that becomes the downfall of Don Juan.

Now that the difference between fact and fiction has been settled, on to Opera Hamilton's production of Don Giovanni. The title role was sung by bass-baritone Daniel Okulitch. Although Ottawa-born and Calgary-raised, the Cincinnati-trained singer, now residing in Vancouver, has only now made his operatic debut in the province of his birth. He chose a great role for such a debut. Tall and lithe, with a voice that not only carries well but also has a vocal timbre that spells oak, he seemed to embodied the brazen libertine, playing the superficial charmer to the hilt. Yet he let us sense the dark side of the character, the one that invariably puts the blame on his victims for he "loves them all", they just don't appreciate it. That is what is now called the OJ symptom.

Don Giovanni (below)

While director Allison Grant's staging allowed Okulitch to play up the lighter side of the character, it was also in the staging that one got a sense of the ruthlessness of the man, who thinks he does the ladies a favour by his unwanted attentions.

Bass-baritone Thomas Goerz, a native of Kitchener, proved the perfect foil for Don Giovanni as his servant, Leporello. This character both despises and admires his master. Goerz, who has a robust voice, drew out the humourous aspects of Leporello, which added much to the lighter side of this dark tale.

The Commendatore, whom Don Juan kills early on in a duel, was in good hands with the well known bass-baritone Gary Relyea in the role. Death comes to him in a sword fight with Don Giovanni after the lecher failed in an attempted seduction of his daughter, Donna Anna (soprano Lyne Fortin). This is, however, not the end of him as he returns later as the eerie stone statue that leads the unrepentant Don Giovanni to his doom. The doom scene, which is not easy to stage, came off exceedingly well with the aid of lighting, some dry ice, and the chorus.

The tale of Don Giovanni is really the story of four couples: Donna Anna and Don Ottavio (American tenor Scott Scully), the peasant couple Zerlina (soprano Michèle Bogdanow) and Masetto (baritone Sean Watson), Don Giovanni and Leporello, and Donna Elvira (soprano Sally Dibblee) and the Commendatore. Although the latter two never meet, they are the ones who ensure Don Giovanni's downfall. Donna Elvira, another of the seducer's victims, refuses to let him go and by doing so, ensures people turn against him. She is the one who foils Don Giovanni's attempt to seduce Zerlina on her very wedding day. Donna Anna and Don Ottavio are betrothed, but love takes a backseat here when Anna becomes obsessed with revenge, expecting Ottavio to be her avenger. When the two lovers are together, Mozart's music has an especially uncharacteristic dark tone not usually found in his operas. In this opera we find Mozart swerved away from his usual theme of love fulfilled. In Don Giovanni, love is very much unfulfilled. Elvira never manages to regain Giovanni, Zerlina has to use all her wiles to regain Masetto, who also wants revenge and finds it hard to trust his new spouse. And just what will become of Anna and Ottavio is left open for us to surmise. As for Leporello, he is finally left to seek a new master, and one hopes, a better one. We know that Don Giovanni goes to Hell, and one can assume that the Commentatore goes to Heaven.