Popular Culture Review Vol. 13, No. 1, January 2002 | Page 85

Petter Sellars’ D on G iovan n i 81 minor characters snort cocaine and shoot heroine. Don Giovanni even distributes parcels of goodies to his party guests. Although the audience never sees donna Elvira herself using drugs during the opera, she forms part of the cast of thousands who look to the Faith Mission Church for guidance. In their weakened emotional, physical, and economic state, the characters are the perfect target for a quick religious overhaul. The long-term efficacy of their conversion, however, is questionable. Sellars suggests that none of the characters escape from their depressin g realities. After don Giovanni is drawn into hell, the other characters rejoice the end of the evildoer. Despite the Joyous lyrics, visual elements suggest that the characters’ lives remain unchanged. An entire chorus, including donna Anna, donna Elvira, and Zerlina, is trapped from the waist down in a huge wooden platform with holes that are spaced so that the characters can barely touch one another. Their characters’ physical immobility and isolation may reflect a spiritual stagnation and confinement. Although Don Giovanni no longer poses a threat to their survival, the characters remain caught in their respective purgatories. In these final scenes, Sellars examines the way American society has taken two of humankind’s basic needs, food and religion, and turned them into pure simulacra. High-fat, fast food and hard-sell evangelism have replaced healthy sustenance for the body and soul. Given their unbalanced diet, the characters will always be physically and religiously undernourished. Furthermore, these spiritual and physical hungers parallel a sexual inanition. Spectators familiar with the don Juan legend usually anticipate, with some relish, the arrival of the statue in the final scene of the play. Such expectation is due, in part, to curiosity about how the fantastical event will be staged. This is, after all, the thematic and visual climax of the play. The handshakes between the protagonist and the statue can send shivers down the spine of even the most jaded viewer. The academic may use this exchange to point out structural parallels in the play. The handshake clearly resonates with occasions in which don Juan falsely gave his hand in marriage or as a sign of trust. Furthermore, don Juan’s meeting with the statue condenses three layers of confrontation into one. In sociological terms, the killer faces his victim. In the psychological terrain, yet another Oedipal confrontation occurs between rebellious son and father. On a religious level, the sinner meets his maker. By the end of the opera, the protagonist has transgressed most social, psychological, and moral boundaries.^ As might be expected, Sellars alters the fantasy elements of Don Giovanni. He minimizes the presence of the statue by focusing on the presence of a very young girl. First of all, due to the constant play with shadow and light, the audience has a hard time determining whether or not the statue is really there. Perched on top of the roof of the Faith Mission Church, the statue speaks but never touches don Giovanni. By obscuring the physical presence of the statue and by eliminating