On moral deficiency

"Calixto Bieito's Don Giovanni lives in a perpetual stupor brought on by drink, sex and drugs, oblivious of any ethical barrier that could prevent him from sacrificing his own safety, and that of others, to this frenzy of the senses. These two themes -the protagonist's amorality and the self-destruction towards which his conduct drives him- are pivotal to Mozart's Don Giovanni. By shifting the action from 18th century Seville to present-day Barcelona and turning the aristocratic Don Giovanni into a man on the fringes of society, Bieito seeks to conjure up images that will cause an impact on his audience by revealing the full stark horror of his lifestyle, without the mitigating or distancing effect of 18th century costumes and gallantries.

Bieito's Don Giovanni is a man whose physical magnetism enables him to enlist the complicity of his gang of cronies; a man who breaks the rules, not in order to conquer his chosen sexual victims, but out of the sheer pleasure of destructive transgression; a man who burns out his life almost without realizing it, whose awareness is numbed by a state of stupor he cannot control, who seeks new sensations in order to escape, not to assert himself.."

(Gran Teatre de Liceu - Barcelona [down] via www.simonkeenlyside.info [down])