I don’t think I was the only one in The Granada Theatre during the Music Academy of the West’s summer grand opera project with the thought that a 2025 production of Mozart’s masterpiece opera could be subtitled "Don Trump Giovanni." Here, after all, we have in librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte’s tale, a central character who is essentially an unapologetically narcissistic, power-mad seducer-rapist who somehow evades the wages of his rampant and convicted criminality. Hm, sounds like someone we know and hear about daily.
Trump’s brash Teflon-coated resistance to justice served seemed to be stated in Giovanni’s cocky comment at the end of Act One: "Even if the world shall fall, nothing frightens me.” Eventually, comeuppance and ghostly vengeance prevail. For Don G., that is.
Propitious timing notwithstanding, it was high time that Don Giovanni, one of the uncontestably great operas in the standard opera canon (perhaps the greatest), paid a return visit to Santa Barbara, after last having been staged by Opera Santa Barbara a decade ago. Advance word that the Music Academy would take it on as this summer’s annual fully staged opera project was welcome news. Even more welcome: a production exceeding our already high expectations.