Trampling mora borders – Cologne Opera asks What if Don Giovanni lived today?

“Today’s Germany has a migrant problem, especially from Turkish migrants. They earn little and have become the new underclass,” the director says.

Although he changes the settings of the story, the theme of the opera still remains.

The hero of Mozart’s opera represents the breaking of every kind of border – especially those erotic and social. His motto “Viva la liberta!” is, for the people who live within the established social order, an almost unacceptable challenge. Don Giovanni pays for his libertine ways by going to hell.

“Don Giovanni is a modern figure for all times. He doesn’t belong to Mozart’s time, because he was simply bad by moral standards,” Laufenberg says. “Today’s people would not treat him as an amoral betrayer anymore. If you look around, you can find many people like Don Giovanni who have many girlfriends and are unwilling to marry.”

But Laufenberg finds that Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni is a classic not because of the controversial character, but because of its theme of death.

“Don Giovanni is afraid of death, so he ‘enriches’ his life by indulging with women,” Laufenberg says. “People always escape from what they fear to face.”

It has been 10 years since the Cologne Opera visited Asia. When music director Markus Stenz collaborated with Laufenberg to produce this opera, he told Laufenberg about his pleasant visit to China two years ago as conductor of Philharmonic Orchestra of Cologne.

With its opera house now under restoration, Cologne has been invited to the Shanghai Expo 2010. Its 315 singers and musicians begin their China tour in September, first in Shanghai and then in Beijing.

In Shanghai, they will perform Richard Wagner’s epoch-making masterpiece Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung).

Don Giovanni

Where: Opera House of the National Center for the Performing Arts (NCPA), 2 Xi Chang’an Jie, Xicheng District

When: September 29-October 1, 7:30 pm

Admission: To be determined

Tel: 6655 0000