Don Giovanni, which opens tomorrow night is the third of the Mozart Da Ponte operas that I have designed the costumes for here in Lyon. The Director is Adrian Noble, set designer - Tom Pye. It's been a terrific experience, and indeed it is one of the great joys of working in opera that you get the opportunity to really get to know such works the best way possible, if your not a musician, that is.
The idea is to revive the operas as a trilogy in January 2011. Through-cast where possible, though so far the only singer who has been in all three is the extraordinary Markus Werba as Guilemo in Cosi, Count Almaviva in Figaro, and as Don Giovanni himself.
We set Cosi on a beach in 2006 with an exceptionally young and beautiful cast, Figaro went back 30 years to the 1980s of the White House. We didn't want it to be set in the 18th century, [surprisingly hard to be sexy in such a self-conciously pretty period] but it had to be set somewhere where the abuse of sexual power made sense. And for Giovanni, Tom had the brilliant idea of going to "little Italy" in 1930s New York.
It works very well, I think. And for the party at the end of Act 1, we turned that into a masked ball in fancy dress, with a nod to the 18th century in the costumes - hence that sketch of a lady in a corset and panniers. We even found the most wonderful black and silver embroidered coat for Don Giovanni which was actually from a very old production of Figaro. It pleased me to give such beautiful costumes another airing, and looks really interesting.
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