Pepperdine Opera Presents DON GIOVANNI

The Pepperdine University Flora L. Thornton Opera Program presents Mozart's masterpiece, Don Giovanni, sung in the original Italian, with English supertitles, at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday and Saturday, February 23 and 25, at Smothers Theatre on Pepperdine's Malibu campus.

Tickets, priced at $20 for the public, $10 for Pepperdine students, and $16 for Pepperdine faculty and staff, are available now by calling the Pepperdine Center for the Arts Box Office at (310) 506-4522 or online at: http://arts.pepperdine.edu/

Henry Price, professor of music at Pepperdine University, directs the student cast, with Tony Cason conducting the Pepperdine University Orchestra.

Seduction, murder, and retribution propel Don Giovanni. In this reimagined production, the events of the story begin as Grammy Award nominees are gathering at the Beverly Hilton hotel in Los Angeles, 1999. Don Giovanni, a young, arrogant, and promiscuous rock star, outrages the other musicians, their assistants, and hotel staff until he encounters something he cannot kill, beat up, dodge, or outwit: his own demons.

"Abuse of power is a theme that Mozart and Da Ponte addressed in their first collaboration, The Marriage of Figaro, just two years before the Don Giovanni premiere," says Professor Price. "Updating our production to modern times has brought a sense of immediacy to our young cast. I'm sure this will be readily apparent to our audience as well."

Pepperdine students from the cast of Don Giovanni were awarded first place in the Opera Division I category of the National Opera Association's Collegiate Opera Scenes Competition at the annual national convention held in Santa Barbara on Thursday, January 5, 2017 where they presented a scene from the show. The cast at the convention included Fernando Grimaldo, Preston Hereford, Hailey Hoffman, Natalie Leonard, Alexander Papandrea, Michelle Pina, Angelo Silva, Matthew Soibelman, and Turner Staton.

"I was unbelievably proud of them the whole time," says Professor Price. "They're so exuberant, charming, and humble. They are great students, and I think they were the hit of the whole conference because everybody liked them so much both in their performance and personally."

Price was additionally presented with the National Opera Association's "Lifetime Achievement Award" at the annual convention on Saturday, January 7.

Pepperdine alumni now populate the rosters of many of the country's finest opera houses, including Los Angeles Opera, San Francisco Opera, and the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Jake Shideler, a 2010 Seaver College graduate, is now Manager of Artistic Operations at LA Opera and 2002 graduate Brian Speck is head of the Houston Grand Opera Studio.

A generous gift from the late Flora L. Thornton has enabled the University to enhance considerably the quality of its opera productions, its summer European opera studies workshops in Heidelberg, and its arts outreach programs. Recent productions include Die Fledermaus, Little Women, The Bartered Bride, The Marriage of Figaro, La boheme, L'elisir d'amore, The Merry Widow, and Cosi fan tutte.

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