“Don Giovanni” – Selected reviews – Maria Sartova

“Don Giovanni” de W.A. Mozart, Teatr Wielki de L’Opera de Łódz

Gazeta Wyborcza Lodź 23.11.2015

(…) Maria Sartova’s direction displays many strengths, not least of which her ability to depict the characters’ psychological traits. (…)

(…) Maria Sartova has inspired the singers by drawing them towards acting and highlighting the bonds and interactions between the characters. (…)

(…) Maria Sartova has succeeded in making the protagonists of Don Giovanni ordinary people you could easily come across in the street. (…)

(…) Maria Sartova’s direction of Don Giovanni does not shy away from sex, on the contrary. It is understated and she does not seek to cause a sensation or please the crowd. She cleverly stages it in the guise of humor and metaphor. (…)

(…) She has aptly used metaphor, through which Don Giovanni does not boil down to the experience of a womanizer no woman can resist. In the end, when the curtain rises there is is a movement of waves at the back of the stage – it counterbalances the flames of hell that devour the “punished seducer”. Then the audience sees a procession of men and women moving forward. It is fair to assume the director was inspired by the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard who pointed out that “seducers have an affinity for water” and compared Don Giovanni’s vigor with “a natural element, a force of nature”. In Maria Sartova’s direction, Don Giovanni is quite clearly both timeless and contemporaneous (…)

Izabella Adamczewska

Dziennik Teatralny 23.11.2015

(…) When the curtain rises the audience discovers a stage where not a single area is left in the shade. (…)

(…) This scheme is visually evocative of the paintings of Jack Vettriano where love takes place in smoke-filled hotel rooms where plenty of liquor has been brought up by room service. It’s as though Vettriano’s characters had stepped down from the canvass and set foot on the stage to act in Mozart’s opera. (…)

(…) The emotions conveyed by the movie-inspired direction hover over the stage. At times they rise or they slide along the stage props. A moving picture indeed. As in movies, highly original images sail before the spectators’ eyes. And the simplicity of the images enables the words of the opera to embrace the full dimension of Don Giovanni’s universe and the squaring of the circle. (…)

Olga Śmiechowicz

Dziennik Teatralny 24.11.2015

(…) Spectators who have not yet seen Don Giovanni at the Łódź opera house directed by Maria Sartova will no doubt be startled by the final scene, both unexpected and unique. (…)

Anna Podsiadło

Portal Teatralny 17.12.2015

(…) Don Giovanni directed by Maria Sartova seems to be an escape into the studios of Cinecitta, much like Federico Fellini’s la Dolce Vita. It is a moving picture that describes a world that yearns to escape metaphysics and becomes humorously content with an alleged miracle, as a parallel is drawn with the high society represented by Don Giovanni, Donna Anna, Dona Elvira and Don Ottavio who are amused by their encounters with ordinary people such as the maid Zerline. (…)

Piotr Olkusz

See also: