Northwest Puppet Center presents Don Giovanni

Northwest Puppet Center presents Don Giovanni

by Rod Parke - SGN A&E Writer Don Giovanni Northwest Puppet Center 9123 15th Ave NE $28 adults, $25 seniors and children (not intended for young children) Through May 4 Once a year, the most excellent Northwest Puppet Center joins some of Seattle's best Early Music players to present a puppet opera. This time they have chosen one of the greatest, Mozart's Don Giovanni. I asked Chris Carter, one of the Center's Directors, to describe some of the modifications they have made to the Mozart opera to adapt it to the puppet stage. Here's what she wrote about the production which opens today: "The biggest change we have made to the opera is converting the recitative parts to spoken dialog (in English). We are keeping most of the arias and all the choruses, and they (as usual) will be in Italian with supertitles in English. "We are very excited about the show - it is our most ambitious opera yet, both musically and theatrically. We have more singers and instrumentalists than for any of our past operas. The opera also has opportunities for wonderful theatrical effects on the marionette stage: the crumbling wall and Stone Guest, devils, a spooky graveyard scene, etc. "Don Giovanni has a long history with marionette theater. It was a favorite marionette play for many years before the Mozart version. As you probably know, Mozart's Don Giovanni was premiered in Prague, where it was produced by marionette theaters immediately after it opened on the live stage. In fact, even today, Don Giovanni is the most popular production of the Prague Marionette Theater. Unfortunately, they use recorded voices and music for their current production. "The old puppet versions followed the same scenario as Mozart/da Ponte, but Don Giovanni was often even more wicked; and they sometimes included a hell scene. The part of Don Giovanni's servant would be played by whoever was the popular puppet clown in the region. We have an old Italian script where Pulcinella plays that part. We are keeping da Ponte's Leporello. "Da Ponte's libretto is really the best of any of the operas we have produced. I think it will be a nice combination to have Mozart's fabulous music in the original language, but da Ponte's satirical and comic dialog spoken in English so the audience can understand." This is a show I would not want to miss. For details, visit www.nwpuppet.org. Reviewer Rod Parke can be reached at rod@sgn.org