Peter Sellars

  • Peter Sellars – Don Giovanni (1990)

    Peter Sellars1981-1990MusicalPerformanceUSA
    Don Giovanni (1990)
    Don Giovanni (1990)

    Quote:
    This modern-dress studio production is “not your parents’ Don Giovanni” – the very opening shots, depicting a real New York slum full of rundown buildings, dead rats and garbage-covered snow, make that clear. Set in the South Bronx, this Giovanni strips the characters of their social statuses, keeps humor to the barest minimum, and brings forth loudly and clearly all the darkness that normally only simmers below the opera’s surface. Anna is an obvious rape victim who turns to heroin to escape from her trauma. Masetto does indeed beat Zerlina. And Giovanni and Leporello, innately “not so different,” are here portrayed as identical African American twins – a nearly interchangeable pair of streetwise, leather-clad, coke-snorting, gun-wielding hoods. Ensembles are staged as interpretive dances, and the finale is a hodgepodge of surreal horror, with a green-faced Commendatore, a somber little girl who lures pedophile Giovanni toward his doom, and bare-chested “demons,” both male and female, rising from the pavement.Read More »

  • Peter Sellars – Nixon in China (2011)

    2011-2020PerformancePeter SellarsUSA

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    Overview
    John Adams’s groundbreaking work vividly brings to life President Nixon’s 1972 visit to communist China. Peter Sellars’s Met production, based on his 1987 world-premiere staging, features choreography by Mark Morris and stars James Maddalena as Nixon, Robert Brubaker as Chairman Mao, Janis Kelly as First Lady Pat Nixon, Russell Braun as Chinese Premier Chou En-lai, and Kathleen Kim as Chiang Ch’ing, Mao’s wife. From the pomp of the public displays to the intimacy of the protagonists most private moments, Adams, Sellars, and librettist Alice Goodman reveal the real characters behind the headlines in this landmark American opera.
    Read More »

Back to top button