At the age of 27 Peter Sellars was hailed as a wunderkind of the U.S.
theater and was already the general manager of the American National
Theater in Washington's Kennedy Center. In his productions, Sellars brings
out the timelessness and topicality of the works with such naturalness that
he arouses interest around the world and stimulates lively discussions as
to whether he is brilliantly modernizing the works or brutally maiming
them. Besides "Don Giovanni," Sellars has also staged "Le nozze di Figaro"
and "Cosi fan tutte" and moved their stories to present-day New York,
whereby, however, he invented a new world for each opera. Thus "Don
Giovanni" plays in Spanish Harlem, "Figaro" in the noble Trump Tower on
Park Avenue, "Così fan tutte" in Despina's dilapidated coffee shop. The
Da Ponte trilogy is for Sellars, who studied at Harvard, the nonplus ultra
of opera literature. With his Mozart productions, Sellars first caused a
ruckus in the New York cultural scene, when he presented his work to the
public between 1986 and 1988 at the University theater festival Pepsico
Summerfare. Then his da Ponte operas went on a European tour and were
finally recorded for television in Vienna. Since then Sellars numbers among
the most sought-after, unorthodox directors on the international opera
scene. But in spite of his gags and witty ideas, Sellars is not out to
provoke; instead, he takes the action of the opera literally, transposing
it with dramatic sharpness and intelligence. His productions prove that
even a 200-year-old opera does not have to be cut off from present-day
life.
