Powdered Wigs and the Legend of Don Juan
Fenimore Chamber Orchestra
March 18, 2023, 3:00 PM at Christ Church, Cooperstown
The legend of Don Juan, a notorious libertine who seduced countless women and ultimately met a tragic end, has been a popular subject in literature, theater, and music for centuries. Gluck’s ballet “Don Juan ou Le Festin de Pierre” and Mozart’s opera “Don Giovanni” are famous musical depictions. Boccherini’s symphony “La casa del diavolo” (The House of the Devil) also draws from the legend, with a finale inspired by Gluck’s work. Whether portrayed as a tragic hero, a comic rogue, or a devilish villain, Don Juan remains a timeless figure and an anti-hero in the world of music and culture as it resonates with the human experience of navigating moral ambiguity and making difficult choices. In a world that often values conformity and obedience to authority, the allure of the anti-hero can represent a desire for individuality and personal agency.
Join us for our upcoming concert as we journey back in time to explore Don Juan’s fascinating character and uncover the secrets of human nature hidden beneath the powdered wigs’ superficial elegance.
Gluck: Don Juan ou le Festin de Pierre
Mozart: Violin Concerto No. 5 ‘Turkish’
Boccherini: Symphony in D minor ‘La casa del diavolo’
featuring Uli Speth, violin
About Fenimore Art Museum
Fenimore Art Museum, located on the shores of Otsego Lake—James Fenimore Cooper’s “Glimmerglass”—in historic Cooperstown, New York, features a wide-ranging collection of American art including folk art; important American 18th- and 19th-century landscape, genre, and portrait paintings; more than 125,000 historic photographs representing the technical developments made in photography and providing extensive visual documentation of the region’s unique history; and the renowned Eugene and Clare Thaw Collection of American Indian Art comprised of nearly 900 art objects representative of a broad geographic range of North American Indian cultures, from the Northwest Coast, Eastern Woodlands, Plains, Southwest, Great Lakes, and Prairie regions. Visit FenimoreArt.org.
