Don Giovanni
A Modern English production
Translated by Anna Pelly
Aim of the Production:
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Opera Anywhere’s mission is to bring live musical performance into the community. As part of this, they are dedicated to restoring Opera to its place as a popular entertainment of the day.
Opera is often staged in modern dress. This production goes further, updating the story and rewriting the language into modern day speech; updating the context such that behaviour and relationships, which were real in the 18th Century, become believable and understandable in the very different society of today.
The aim of this is to familiarise a genre which, for many people, is seen as inaccessible and alien and to open it up to the widest possible audience. Familiarity, characters we can relate to and empathise with, wit, word play, humour, racy action: in this way Opera stands a better chance of attracting audiences more used to film and television.
Reinventing a Classic work for today’s audience: sublime music unadulterated, language and characters reborn of today.
Contemporary:
Characters. The eponymous anti-hero and his world are updated to late 20 Century City of London. The characters are reborn contemporary: they use the language – slang, expressions, expletives – which the audience use and have their own, familiar voice linguistically as well as musically.
Language. This use of modern language in Classical Opera shocks traditional preconceptions about Opera. The shock factor is not gratuitous: modern banter, modern wit, revive the immediacy and vitality of the production and open up a whole new level of understanding for the audience of today.
Believable:
Action. The production aims to bring Opera back from the rarefied sphere is currently inhabits. To portray real, believable characters whose behaviour may be extreme, fascinating, bad, but never artificial or postured. Sexy and fast paced, the action is realistic if not everyday.
Scenario. The story is set in late 1990s in the world of high finance against an historical backdrop of dramatic events in world markets. This is a world perceived as glamorous, a little dangerous, where life is lived on the edge by larger than life characters, as portrayed in films such as Wall Street and Bonfire of the Vanities. This provides a believable setting where the charismatic, ruthless Don Giovanni can thrive.
Familiar:
Setting. To most people, the office setting, with its hierarchies and politics as well as its companionship, is a familiar one.
Motivation. The cooperation of Don Giovanni’s victims is more understandable when the power balances are familiar. The power of the Boss over the junior employee, of the fee earner over the back office. The strength of feeling, the powerful emotions of Opera have real meaning when the audience can empathise with the characters’ dilemmas; the devastation when not only the heart, but the career and livelihood are threatened.
Anna Pelly - Artistic Director
After reading Modern Languages at Oxford University, Anna Pelly qualified as a lawyer in the City of London, gaining one of only two distinctions in her year. She left the City to bring up her two children and started to retrain her voice in the late 1990s. In 2001 she founded Opera Soufflé with Louise Woodgate.
Opera Soufflé's aim was to produce high quality comedy entertainment using mostly Operatic repertoire, in order to entertain but also to present Opera in a way which would be more appealing to a wider audience. “Opera Soufflé’s shows unashamedly reinvent Opera” Oxford Times.
Anna wrote five totally original shows for Opera Soufflé, rewriting lyrics to Operatic and cabaret pieces to fit the new story line. During this time, she also produced solo Cabaret slots, with shows or songs written and performed for a particular event or occasion.
Merging her solo work and work with Opera Soufflé, Anna launched Lippy Lyrics in Autumn 2005. For Lippy Lyrics, Anna writes, produces and performs in light hearted musical comedies which use operatic repertoire, sometimes with words rewritten.
Anna is developing a one woman cabaret: a “musical monologue” which takes a wry look at the life of contemporary woman through well known music and original satirical songs.
Anna has just completed a new translation / libretto for Mozart’s Don Giovanni, which updates the story to 1998 and uses modern day spoken English (“a radical resetting”).
Recently other works include a script for an abbreviated production of Verdi’s Macbeth for Street Opera.
In Autumn / winter 2005/6 Anna directed Opera Anywhere’s production of Curiouser and Curiouser, an Opera pantomime (“two hours of hiliarity and mayhem…innovative…fun” Oxford Times) and is currently working on their summer production of Opera Scenes: scenes from Operas from 500 years, staged as clips from well known films or film genres. (“fantastically imaginative” Oxford journalist) . She is due to direct a production of Don Giovanni for Opera Anywhere in 2007.
Anna has performed with the Oxford University Operatic Society and Dorset Opera, and sang Olga in Oxford Touring Opera’s production of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin in 2001. She has sung various roles with Opera Anywhere and performed extensively with Opera Soufflé and Lippy Lyrics. She studies singing with Quentin Hayes.
