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The ´opera of all operas´, ´Don Giovanni´ (1787) is one of many workings of the story of the eternal debaucher Don Juan, who lives life to the full, jeering at any and every moral injunction and averting his gaze from the consequences of his escapades. ´Don Giovanni´ is not, however, merely the tale of a sinner brought to book, just as it is no simple comedy. It is a unique dramatic work in which even the seemingly routine comic situations – which would be effervescent and inconsequential in other operas – have a hard edge to them and heighten the overall tension. In the end Giovanni gets his just deserts, even if it remains an open question who has delivered the verdict and meted out the punishment: God, mankind or, as director Jozef Bednárik intimates, Giovanni´s own arid inner being. Evil, then, is punished as it should be. However, the mocking jeer of one who was not afraid to flout the laws of God and man will long echo in our ears...
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