Christian Reif to lead opera production of "Don Giovanni" at Music Academy of the West"

A Rake’s Digress
By Josef Woodard
Santa Barbara Independent
July 11, 2025

For Its Annual Fully Staged Opera, the Music Academy of the West Fires Up Mozart’s Masterpiece ‘Don Giovanni’ at Santa Barbara’s Granada Theatre

The shamelessly rakish and womanizing scoundrel Don Giovanni has made his presence known in The Granada Theatre before, going back to Opera Santa Barbara’s production a decade back. He makes a timely return this weekend, on Friday night and Sunday afternoon (July 18 and 20), as the Music Academy of the West brings Mozart’s masterpiece Don Giovanni to the Granada. The tragic yet comic “opera buffa” classic takes this summer’s spotlight as the Academy’s program of presenting fully staged opera, showcasing its internationally acclaimed Voice Program.

Mozart worked with librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte to create Don Giovanni, considered one of the greatest of all operas, which premiered in 1787. The Mozart/Da Ponte partnership also produced the evergreen operas Marriage of Figaro and Così Fan Tutte. Via the Music Academy production, Joshua James Klein stars in the titular role, a brash and brutal aristocratic libertine, and a womanizer wending his way to mystical comeuppance over the course of two acts. Irakli Pkhaladze stars as Leporello, Xinshu Li as Donna Anna, and David Kahng as Commendatore.

At the helm, onstage and in the orchestra pit, are Mo Zhou — a Chinese-born stage director who has worked with the Houston Grand Opera, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, and many others — and conductor Christian Reif. Reif is chief conductor of the Gävle Symphony Orchestra in Sweden, has worked with the San Francisco Symphony, and lives in Munich with his über-talented soprano wife, Julia Bullock, and their son.

This Don Giovanni arrives in anything but standard staging garb, instead set in the morally dubious la-la landscape of Hollywood circa the 1930s, recalling Opera Santa Barbara’s Italian cinema context for its production of Pagliacci last fall. In director Zhou’s reconfiguring of time and place, the contextual connections are surprisingly logical: Think of the Don as a progenitor of Harvey Weinstein, in modern terms, or morally corrupted power-monger and Columbia Pictures head Harry Cohn during the ’30s “Golden Age” of tinsel town — the literal Don Giovanni doppelgänger in Zhou’s production.

Zhou has noted that “Cohn ruled his empire with an iron grip, manipulating careers, controlling lives, and using his power to exploit those around him. He was brilliant, ruthless, and insatiable — a Hollywood king who, like Giovanni, believed himself invincible.

“Leporello, Giovanni’s right-hand man, takes inspiration from Sidney Buchman, a screenwriter and producer who worked within the system but later paid the price for challenging it. Like Leporello, Buchman was both complicit and self-aware, navigating a world in which loyalty to power could be as dangerous as defying it.”

In this case, the seemingly remote realm of a historic opera seizes upon the capability of opera art form to supply more than memorable musical and dramatic content, but to also wrestle with current and ongoing societal issues. Zhou’s recontextualization of the Mozart/Da Ponte opera staple transports an 18th-century story into an early epoch of Hollywood but implicitly taps into the culture of change brought about by the 21st century awakening of the “Me Too” movement, among other themes.

“History reminds us that resistance is never in vain,” Zhou notes. “For every system built on fear and silence, there will be those who speak out. For every unchecked tyrant, there will be a reckoning. And for every false kingdom that seems indestructible, there will come a moment when it crumbles.

“This is not just the story of one man, but of an entire system — one that has risen, fallen, and will rise again in different forms. But as long as there are those willing to question, challenge, and fight, there will always be the possibility of change.”

Just add Mozart’s soul-stirring and mischievous musical scoring, stir and enjoy.

Don Giovanni takes place at the Granada Theatre (1214 State St.) on Friday, July 18, at 7:30 p.m., and Sunday, July 20, at 2 p.m.

Read the full article here.