Portland Opera’s “Don Giovanni”

Portland Opera has a delightful habit of inviting a bunch of Portland-area cartoonists, including me, to come watch dress rehearsals and post drawings of what we see. So on Monday (which was my birthday, so that worked out nicely), I got to see their imported-from-NYC production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni. This was a modernist production, which meant 1930s costumes, minimalist sets, a gray and black and white color scheme, and lots of surprisingly explicit gropes during the sexy bits.

So here’s what I drew. You can click on any of these pictures to see them embiggified.

First, some stuff I drew in my sketchbook while I was watching the dress rehearsal:

Second, the cast of Peanuts perform Don Giovanni:

And finally, an illustration I did. Since the costumes for this production mostly seemed to be from the 1930s, I tried to draw this in the style of a cartoonist from the 1930s.

If you want to see what other cartoonists did, the best bet is to follow the #pdxgiovanni hashtag on Twitter. But here are some links (in no particular order):

Becky Hawkins (who drew me, by the way! Also herself and Lucy Bellwood.)
Mike Russell
Lucy Bellwood
Adrian Wallace
Matthew Grisby
Joelle Jones [1] [2]

That’s the ones I could find as of this moment, but I’m sure there will be more at that #pdxgiovanni hashtag.

Oh, I nearly forgot! If you’re in Portland and want to see the show, “Don Giovanni” will be playing Nov. 2, 4, 8 and 10 at the Keller Auditorium. You can get half-price tickets for the Thursday, Nov. 8 performance at this link if you use the password MOZART.

And finally, in case you want to check ’em out, links to my past Portland Opera posts: Candide | L’heure espagnole and L’enfant et les sortilèges | Turandot | Hansel and Gretel