Don Giovanni at Perm Opera gets 18+ age rating

Simone Alberghini in Don Giovanni, on stage and in rehearsals

We love it when an opera is listed as appropriate for those 18 and older. That's a pretty sure sign that it's going to be a sexy production and the Don Giovanni at the Perm Opera in Russia is no exception.

This production is the final opera in their Mozart-Da Ponte trilogy and it's being promoted as "a feminine view" of the opera. The role of Don Giovanni will be alternated between two barihunks, Simone Alberghini and Andrè Schuen, who many might remember from his shirtless and sexy performance in Donizetti's Elixir of Love in Graz.

Andrè Schuen as Don Giovanni in Vienna (right)

Argentinean director Valentina Carrasco, who was behind Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen in Buenos Aires and Britten’s Turn of the Screw in Lyon, is directing this production. Carrasco plans to stylize the production in Perm in the spirit of film noir and populate the stage with mannequins and ‘surrogate’ people, among whom the only real person to be found is Don Giovanni. The production is the concept of the Catalan troupe “La Fura dels Baus,” which reproduces the "soul of the music in effective scenic images."

We have to raise our number one gripe with opera company websites, which is not listing casts. The Perm Opera list all of the technical staff, but not a single singer. We had to go to Operabase to find the cast. Let's hope that they fix this oversight soon.

Performances are September 21, 22, 24, 25, 27 and 28 and tickets are available at http://permopera.ru/en/playbills/playbill/detail/4963.