Bitef

others but also binds them in his circle of power. What desire? We have sought its logic of operation: Giovanni's persecutors are not seduced to want to have him, as it seems. What they desire in Giovanni is his libertine sense of freedom that society forbids them to have, hence, they can do as little as to indulge in the taste of it. They do not desire him, they desire to be desired by him. He triggers their voice. Anna is screaming in consumerist hysteria: "protect me from what I want!" The 18th century libertine is growing into a bulimic vampire. Giovanni is among us: the spectre of capitalism. He has to be flexible and invisible to compress time into a moment. Capital needs a smooth space for free action. Its image is the promise that hijacks the body in the future into the here-and-now: you have the moment now to choose to be yourself, and if you choose this, then that... Still we left Giovanni with a mark of generosity, for he entirely accepts the rule of the game. He knows that eventually he will have to face a choice of non-choice. Freedom or life? If he chooses life, hop! he will lose his freedom, and if he chooses freedom, he will lose both, his life and his freedom. (Jacques Lacan,"The Subject and the Other: Alienation" Xi Seminar). Find The Body In Opera! Underneath the spectacle of the voice, which is so central to opera, there is a spectacle of the body, often straight jacketed in the habits of supporting the operatic voice. We are striving to push the limit of what a body can express while singing opera. All that needs to be told, i.e. narrated is already in the brilliant voice-type-casting of Mozart, amplified under conductor's demands for vocal plasticity. So, no need to act. Appropriating a dancerly approach to the body, we sought a primarily physical performance. Singers ought to have more than one organ of expression, i.e. voice and the face mimic. Expression thus deflects from faciaiity to the whole body in motion, and the face can return to also being a moving head. Movements and gestures - but also the inner motion initiated inside the body's organs and fluids, like the fat that can inflect a move with sensuality - make up the physical "characters" of Giovanni, Anna, Ottavio, Elvira, Zerlina, Masetto, Commendatore. Find Out How it Stops, Breaks, And Restarts! A system of programmed noises and disturbances of sorts forces itself onto the illusion of opera. Breaks and ruptures are like Giovanni's conquests of love. The failure to carry out the promise (this is an opera) makes it possible to begin it again. Forgetfulness is a property of all action. Bojana Cvejic THE VOYAGE OF DON GIOVANNI... Don Juan in Spanish or Don Giovanni in Italian - a libertine, atheist, seducer, womanizer, rebel, rascal and Devil, even murderer - underwent numerous transformations during his long voyage through European culture. We meet him for the first time in medieval plays and stories, then through the literature and performing arts of humanism, classicism and romanticism, then through contemporary literature and philosophy, extending as far as mass media representations in film, pop mu-

Mozart's opera, directed byßojanaïyejicatthe beginning of 21st century, finds a new way of looking at Don Juan. She is quite radical in her approach to fut status of a libertine, as a fluid autonomous Individual in neoliberal capitalist society where he Is not a rebel any more but ■'Otter-Ills a,smooth operator“ - becomes a pragmatist... Ana Vujanovic

Don Juan / Don Giovanni as a Bitef topic: 8 Bitef 74: Teatarna Maloj Bronoj, Moscow, USSR/Molière: Don Juan / Directed by Anatolij Efros (Award) 12 Bitef 78: Théâtre ses Quartiers D'ivry, Paris, France / Molière: École de Femmes, Misanthrope, Don Juan, Tartuffe / Directed by Antoine Vitez 21 Bitef 87: Commédie De Genève, Geneva, Switzerland / Molière: Don Juan ou le festin de Pierre / Directed by Benno Besson 40 Bitef 06; Nadonalna ustanova Dramski teatar Skopje, Skopje, Makedonia / Molière: Don Zuan / Rezija: Aleksandar Popovski

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