Eleanor is Assistant Director for the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence’s new production of Don Giovanni, directed by Robert Icke.

"Who died? You or the old man?" The question that the terrified Leporello asks Don Giovanni at the end of his duel with the Commendatore seems ludicrous, yet doubt creeps in. At the beginning, an elderly man is killed by a younger one, who then seems to want to escape him; in the end, the former returns and drags the latter into death. What link unites these two beings – one seeming to prolong the other like the ages of life? Two faces of the seducer divide our consciences more than ever: the libertine with desirable charisma, the punished dissolute man whose infamy reflects on everyone. But what does it mean today to be cast into hell? In a bed of love and agony a heart beats, too weak, too strong, thrown into a hallucinatory journey to the confines of limbo. The eighth production of the Festival's most iconic work is an opportunity for Sir Simon Rattle to return to Mozart at the helm of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and a lavish cast led by Andrè Schuen; renowned for his penetrating adaptations of the classics, the English director Robert Icke is making his operatic debut.