I will be the keyboard speaker for this symposium focused on the upcoming summer production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni by Opera Wilmington. My presentation at UNC Wilmington will center on the long reception history that pushed toward thinking about the Don as an irresistible sex god, covering over the work’s explicit dramatization of sexual assault. The title: Power, Privilege, Deception, and Violence: Don Giovanni, Then and Now.

NOTE: Sadly, while this annual symposium has always been promoted and marketed in the past, my talk this time seems to have been “hidden” from digital view. There was a flyer, but I cannot find any web site referencing my appearance. The current situation with the Trump administration’s virulently anti-DEI attacks is likely the reason, especially since UNC had preemptively started dismantling its DEI programs.