Abstract

The article discusses the various aspects of freedom of interpretation in the artwork. The new version of Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” in The Odessa National Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet by the stage director Yuri Alexandrov became the subject of the researcher’s analysis. The stage director presented to the audience two pamphlets: “The Directorial Concept - Direct Speech” and “The libretto from the opera Don Giovanni by Mozart in the innovative interpretation by Yuri Alexandrov.” The author of the article questions whether this new interpretation has a significant effect on the meaning of the opera and whether Don Juan acquires a fundamentally new portrayal. Mozart provides the opportunity to interpret the Don Juan opera in a playful way, which the author takes as an opportunity to reveal the game of comical and tragic components driven by the musical and contextual elements of the originator. She presents this dichotomy as the source of occasional conflicting interpretations of the opera’s events. Nelly Ivanova-Georgievskaya is able to convincingly show that Yuri Alexandrov’s interpretation of the libretto comes into conflict not only with the original text, but also with the familiar depiction of the opera’s characters, transforming comic scenes into vulgar ones, and making tragic ones farcical.