March 27, 2011

• Don Giovanni

  I returned from Severance Hall the other night after watching Don Giovanni.  The rendition was excellent, with many a modern twist, albeit occasionally over the top bordering on exhibitionist/raunchy.  That said, the story itself is quite tawdry and salacious as it centers on the force of nature that is Don Giovanni, an arrogant, self-centered nobleman who's chief pleasure in life is the seduction of women.  As he says, he loves women too much to love but one - to love but one is to be cruel to all others.  This view colours all his attempts at conquest throughout the opera, which tracks not only the damage that he causes to various women, but also to the men who love them.

  The tale ends with his demise at the hand of the ghost of a man he slew.  Commandatore scene.  Judgment is exacted after he is offered a chance at redemption, which he refuses.  He perishes, but the effects on the other families/couples remain - some stronger, some denied happiness.  Particularly piquant is Don Ottavio's Il Mio Tesorio.  Don Ottavio is played by a tenor, and the part is an older man who dotes on Donna Anna, a woman who, in the opening scene, resisted Don Giovanni's advances.  Donna Anna also loses her father to Giovanni, when the Commandatore (Donna Anna's father) challenges Don Giovanni to a duel to protect his beloved daughter's honour.

  Il mio tesoro intanto 
  andate a consolar,
  E del bel ciglio il pianto
  cercate di asciugar.
  Ditele che i suoi torti
  a vendicar io vado;
  Che sol di stragi e morti
  nunzio vogl'io tornar.

  Meantime go and console my dearest one,and seek to dry the tears from her lovely eyes.
  Tell her that I have goneto avenge her wrongs, and will return only as the messenger of punishment and death.

  Don Ottavio also sings: Dalla sua pace, which I also love.

  Dalla sua pace la mia dipende;
  Quel che a lei piace vita mi rende,
  Quel che le incresce morte mi dà.
  S'ella sospira, sospiro anch'io;
  È mia quell'ira, quel pianto è mio;
  E non ho bene, s'ella non l'ha.

  On her peace of mind depends mine too,what pleases her gives life to me,what grieves her wounds me to the heart.
  If she sighs, I sigh with her;her anger and her sorrow are mine,and joy I cannot know unless she share it.

  -------

  When I first watched this as a child, I had no idea what I was listening to.  It was beautiful, but it was just beautiful, lyrical music.  I had so little of an idea of the plot that when I watched Days of Being Wild by Wong Kar Wai, I didn't notice the resemblance of the themes.  Indeed, there are only so many stories that are told in the world, but I have to note that I know of few that center on the free-radical of a man who loves wantonly and recklessly as he.

  The Spanish name for the character is Don Juan, and the original.  More interestingly, one of the character's love interests goes by the name of Haidee (Byron's), also the name of the girl who ultimately becomes the wife of the Count of Monte Cristo, by Dumas.

  It's strange realising that all of these folk-tale like characters can intertwine in the popular fictions of the day.  But who is this libertine and why did he capture such attention?  What does he have to do with Leslie Cheung's character in WKW's Days of Being Wild?

  As a comparison, Leslie's character was a beautiful, rootless drifter who was an unacknowledged son of a philipino chinese family, presumably with some Shanghainese relation.  His initial encounter with Maggie Cheung in the movie is a timeless image - and a wholly different seduction.  He asks her to look at a watch with him for a minute, telling her that this moment - this minute would be indelibly etched in his memory... that he would never forget her.  The film goes on to show his different "women" that he is attracted to for different reasons.  While Don Giovanni's affairs are brutal things, and his use of his friends callous and brutish, Leslie's character uses the others in an amoral, yet unmalicious way.  He does not intend them to be hurt - nor does he use them as shields - but the callous damage is done all the same.

  When one of his friends (Jacky Cheung) shows interest in a girl, he flaunts his relationship with her (Carina Lau) - showing his power and romantic puissance.  Andy Lau eventually confesses his interest in Maggie Cheung's Character, another woman "stuck" because of her memories of Leslie's character. 

  Whereas each of these men treasure these women for one reason or another, Leslie's character only collects the experiences and memories - treasing the memory and the flavour of the experiences - but not the woman herself.  In the end, in the final scenes where Leslie dies, Andy Lau asks him about Maggie's Character, thinking that he would not remember that minute from years ago. 

  But he does.  He remembers her, foiling an attempt by Andy to paint him as truly careless.

  The problem is not Leslie's lack of sensitivity, but rather his belief that he cannot and will not be tied down.  "There is a kind of bird that is born without feet.  It must forever fly, for on the day that it lands, it will be dead."

  Andy: "There is no such bird, for that bird was dead when it was born."

  While Don Giovanni's character is dragged into hell by the stone statue of the Commandatore, Leslie's is shot to death while on the train.  They both have had opportunities to repent and turn from their callousness - Giovanni could have become an upstanding nobleman, whereas Leslie could have settled down with any number of beautiful women...

  Giovanni's moral fibre is very different - killing, infidelity, outright lies - none were strangers to him.  Leslie's was intrinsically a romantic and his chief fault was his complete aversion to commitment - and his desire to find his parents.

  Still, to my mind, there is an echo here, a resonance in the social effects of these men that are emotional free radicals, causing damage, moving on, and destroying society.  I have many flaws, and I think all men are tempted to be a bit like either Don Giovanni or WKW's Leslie.  But they serve as warnings in their respective societies - Don Giovanni - this selfish living earns you no friends - and perhaps a quick grave.  It warns women not to be taken in by this seducer.

  WKW's is much more appropos to HK/asia - family ties bind.  Love is a binding.  You cannot have love without a binding.  Nor can you demand a bond when it is not offered.  Those that toy with emotions without commitment imperil others, both male and female around them.

  -------

  Dalla sua pace

  Dalla sua pace la mia dipende;
  Quel che a lei piace vita mi rende,
  Quel che le incresce morte mi dà.
  S'ella sospira, sospiro anch'io;
  È mia quell'ira, quel pianto è mio;
  E non ho bene, s'ella non l'ha.

  On her peace of mind depends mine too,what pleases her gives life to me,what grieves her wounds me to the heart.
  If she sighs, I sigh with her;her anger and her sorrow are mine,and joy I cannot know unless she share it.

  After Don Giovanni meets his end, Donna Anna asks for another year to grieve, to delay her wedding with Ottavio one more year.

  Ottavio is a gentle spirit, ultimately, indulging her even with time, despite his gray head.  Is this not what every woman desires?  Space and freedom to be loved and to sort through all the emotions that course through her?  And he obliges her because of his love for her.  And his love takes on vindictive elements, as well as comforting elements.  To love is to protect.

  I Corinthians 13:

   ⁴ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

   ⁸ Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. ⁹ For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰ but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. ¹¹ When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. ¹²For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

   ¹³ And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

  Emphasis in bold, mine.

  Justice is eventually meted out.  And that is a warning to those that would injure hearts wantonly...

  But a moment within the hearts of the offenders, and its wrongdoing - but a complex one at that.

  • 9:52 am
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