It gives me great pleasure to experience a performance of something I know and love with someone who is seeing/hearing it for the first time and finds he/she likes it. We watched an abridged Don Giovanni in class today, interspersed with my reductionist descriptions of the plot of the missing sections. The students were laughing out loud (at the opera, not at me). I loved that they came in expecting to be bored by opera and at least some of them left wanting more and planning to buy tickets to an upcoming performance of Le Nozze di Figaro.

I did not have to bring up the issue of the female characters in the opera. They asked about it. While we were sitting through �Batti, batti,� they both tittered and gasped at the translations and dramatization on the screen (for those unfamiliar with this particular aria, a peasant woman, who has just escaped the clutches of the lecherous Don Giovanni (albeit temporarily), attempts to reconcile with her fianc� by asking him to beat her because she�s been a bad, bad girl�). One of the students raised her hand after the scene and asked, �Is she stupid or is she being manipulative,� which launched us into a discussion of the nature of intelligence in Mozart�s female and lower class characters and how manipulation is often the only way they can make themselves heard. I had to cut things short to finish the screening, but hopefully Wednesday we�ll be able to talk about Mozart�s tendency to set socially subversive texts and his own difficulties negotiating his interactions with nobility.

It was clear from their homework assignments that came in today that many of them connected to the opera�s themes and therefore were able get around the barrier that opera often seems to pose to newcomers to the genre and figure out how the music works. Or, as one of my students so eloquently put it, "If I didn't have the words in front of me, I would never have known this piece of classical music was about a guy trying to win a lady's heart."

I did find it interesting to watch the opera again after having read the aforementioned essay on date rape and the Don (click back to yesterday�s entry if you don�t know what I�m talking about). When any of the wronged women attempt to make their stories own, Don Giovanni dismisses them by calling them crazy. I found myself getting very angry on their behalf. Was I imagining it, or did I hear muffled cheers when the Don got dragged down to hell? Or maybe they were just happy that class was over.

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