'Don Giovanni' Seattle Musical Theatre’s brand new musical opens their ‘second season’ | Arts & Culture

Seattle Musical Theatre is branching out in an ambitious, exciting new direction. They’re giving a try to presenting world premiere musicals, augmenting their mainstage season to maximize the use of their facility and bring new audiences in.

The first new musical, opening January 7th at their Magnuson Park theater, is Don Giovanni: A New Musical, a completely re-envisioned musical theater version of Mozart’s and Lorenzo Da Ponte’s opera. It’s written by 22 (!) year-old Seattle native Jesse Smith who has already written three musicals at this tender age.

Jesse had a workshop of Don Giovanni in 2009, when he was a student at Cornish College. Fruition Productions, a Cornish student interest group and newly minted nonprofit, will partner with SMT.

The musical has an unusual connection for Jesse. “I fell in love with (the opera) Don Giovanni when I heard the finale in a scene from (the movie) Amadeus. I was four years old and I still remember the moment I heard the piece,” Jesse says. His mom rented the opera and he listened to the opera over and over again as a tiny boy.

The 1787 opera is about the philandering character we know more as ‘Don Juan,’ the man who seduces dozens of women but really loves none of them. Don Giovanni kills a woman’s father, who has come after him for trying to seduce her from her fiancée. He tries to hide his murder and also tries to seduce several more women. He invites a couple to have their wedding at his castle and tries to seduce the bride. Fleeing from all his victims, he finds a graveyard statue of the murdered father in a cemetery and invites the statue to dinner. The statue appears and drags Don Giovanni down to hell, and the assembled victims rejoice.

Jesse has written a brand new score that transports this story to the 1920s in Spain. He wanted to modernize it, but changing it to 2011 wouldn’t work as well. He explains, “The idea was to bring it into the art form that I was raised on: making it more standard musical theater music.

“Spain in the 1920s has the tradition of opera and the Don Juan myth. In the 1920s Spain had a silver age which was an economic decline, but the style in which they lived was still extravagant and above their means.

“Don Giovanni’s life is in decline, but he continues to live in extravagance, eventually leading to his damnation. He cares about youth and beauty and who he used to be.

“If it were modernized to now, the music would have to be so different (hip hop? rap?). Don Giovanni has a butler and there’s a sword fight and no one carries swords anymore. We wanted to keep those elements, so the 1920s was as close as we could get.”

Jesse took piano lessons from age 8 and started writing musicals at age 19 at Cornish. “I was in Cornish in the theater track and had nothing to do with music, but we had teams that had to produce shows weekly and I started writing music for these teams and became the go-to guy for that and started writing musicals from there. It was a natural progression from writing a song to a song cycle to a whole musical. I have had workshop productions of each of the three musicals I’ve written. But this is the first big mounting of a show ever.”

The new program of ‘second season’ was the brainchild of SMT member, Carine Hutchison. Carine reports, “Last year we were brainstorming ideas of how to make more use of the things we have in order to generate more funds for the theater. Since we have our space, why not see if we can help produce new work as a co-production?

“The intent is to get a younger, fresher audience in to our space for something that hasn’t been done before. We found a couple of openings for the two shows we’re doing this year (Don Giovanni: The Musical and The King’s Proposal or the Marriage of Princess Guido). They are very different shows from each other.”

With changes going on in usage of buildings on the Magnuson Park campus, SMT lost their use of another building to rehearse in. That puts next year’s ‘second season’ in jeopardy, since rehearsal space is a key issue. SMT will evaluate how these shows work before committing to continue the effort.

How did they know of Jesse’s work? Carine explains, “Jesse (acted in) two of our (mainstage) shows last season and we knew he was writing musicals. We asked if he would be interested.

“It’s a big risk on their part, too, because they have to come up with funding for their own project (stipends to actors, designers; materials to build the sets and costumes). But they have access to all our scene shop, prop storage, costume shop and they’re welcome to use all that. For both groups, the people that wrote it are involved in the show.”

Jesse has never orchestrated his work before. Orchestrating is taking a piece of music only for piano, for instance, and writing the musical accompaniment for other instruments. When asked about his progress, he enthusiastically says, “The Complete Idiot’s Guide for Arranging and Orchestrating is my best friend right now.

“It’s helped me out of so many binds. It helped me learn drum notation, how to place the woodwind part a major second above where you hear it. I give it to the musicians and hope it’s right. I have recording software (Logic Pro 8) that I can layer in the parts and play it back to myself. We’ll see, but I’m pretty certain it’s going to be ok.

“We’ll have piano, cello, woodwind player (saxophone and clarinet) and a drummer. I had never written parts for cello or saxophone or clarinet or drum before. I love it though. It’s something I’m extremely interested in.”

Jesse is very happy about his cast. “Danny Kam is amazing to work with as Don Giovanni. He’s got the character traits and an amazing voice, too. The rest of the actors are working incredibly hard and I’m really excited about this project. This is absolutely going to fulfill my dream.”

For more information or tickets, call the box office at 206-363-2809 or visit www.seattlemusicaltheatre.org.