Mixed-Composer Ballet / Dance Work
Don Juan**
A full-evening dance-theatre work choreographed and staged by Goyo Montero for Staatstheater Nürnberg Ballett, reimagining the Don Juan myth through literary fragments, infernal play, seduction, doubling, and a mixed musical landscape including Lera Auerbach.
World Premiere
Premiered on 21 July 2012 at Opernhaus Nürnberg. Created for Staatstheater Nürnberg Ballett / Nuremberg Ballet.
Literary Sources
After Goethe, Tirso de Molina, and José Zorrilla y Moral. Montero draws the Don Juan myth into a hybrid field of Spanish literary memory, German theatrical shadow, and contemporary dance-theatre construction.
Music
A mixed-composer score including Lera Auerbach. The production uses music by Auerbach, Boccherini, Cake, Corelli, Gluck, Mozart, Tom Waits, and others.
Creative Team
- Choreography and Staging Goyo Montero.
- Music Lera Auerbach, Luigi Boccherini, Cake, Arcangelo Corelli, Christoph Willibald Gluck, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Tom Waits, and others.
- Company Staatstheater Nürnberg Ballett / Nuremberg Ballet.
- Set / Décor Verena Hemmerlein and Goyo Montero.
- Costumes Goyo Montero and Angelo Alberto.
- Lighting Design Olaf Lundt and Goyo Montero.
- Production Photography Jesús Vallinas.
Work Information
Musical Landscape
- Lera Auerbach Included in the official music list; critical coverage specifically identifies Dream of the Stabat Mater among the sources.
- Classical and Baroque Sources Luigi Boccherini, Arcangelo Corelli, Christoph Willibald Gluck, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
- Contemporary / Popular Sources Cake, Tom Waits, and others.
- Form A musical collage rather than a single-composer ballet score, reflecting Don Juan as a fractured theatrical figure.
Theatrical Frame
- Don Juan The seducer appears not as a single stable figure, but as a mythic role refracted through literary and theatrical traditions.
- M. Critical coverage describes a Goethe-inspired Mephistophelean figure performed by Julia Bartolome.
- Doubling The production uses shadows, doubles, and female figures as part of its infernal and erotic vocabulary.
- Final Image Contemporary review material describes a glass-like “hell box” as a terminal image of enclosure.
The Work
Don Juan is a full-evening dance-theatre work in which Goyo Montero approaches one of European theatre’s most unstable figures: the seducer, blasphemer, performer, collector of bodies, and finally the man enclosed by the consequences of his own myth. Rather than treating Don Juan through a single literary or musical source, Montero constructs him as a collage — a figure assembled from Spanish drama, German shadow, spoken theatre, music, and the body.
The work draws on Tirso de Molina and José Zorrilla y Moral, returning the legend to its Spanish origins, while also invoking Goethe through a Mephistophelean presence. This dramaturgical crossing is mirrored by the score: Auerbach, Boccherini, Corelli, Gluck, Mozart, Tom Waits, Cake, and others form a shifting musical terrain in which the historical and contemporary, sacred and profane, elegant and grotesque coexist.
In this mixed world, Don Juan becomes less a character than a theatrical mechanism. Seduction is staged as repetition, identity as doubling, and desire as a game that turns infernal. The stage vocabulary described in contemporary coverage — rotating surfaces, openings and closures, veils, glass, shadow, and final containment — suggests a production built around exposure and trap, erotic display and metaphysical punishment.
Auerbach’s presence within the musical collage gives the work one of its darker spiritual registers. In the context of the Don Juan myth, her music does not function merely as accompaniment, but as part of a broader architecture of memory, ritual, and judgment: a sound world capable of holding beauty and threat in the same gesture.
** Catalogue marker: mixed-composer ballet / dance work including music by Lera Auerbach.
Visual and Production World
The production’s design was created as an integrated theatrical world: set and décor by Verena Hemmerlein and Goyo Montero, costumes by Goyo Montero and Angelo Alberto, and lighting by Olaf Lundt and Goyo Montero. Contemporary critical description points to a visually active stage of shifting surfaces, opening and closing spaces, veils, infernal imagery, and a final gesture of enclosure.
Production photography is credited to Jesús Vallinas in published sources. Any use of production images on this page should be cleared through the appropriate rights holders before publication.
Online Materials
References, Reviews and Production Sources
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ArchiveStaatstheater Nürnberg Digital Fundus Staatstheater Nürnberg
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ChoreographerGoyo Montero: Don Juan goyomontero.com
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ReviewTeufelsspiele Die Deutsche Bühne
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Repertoire PDF15 Jahre Staatstheater Nürnberg Ballett Staatstheater Nürnberg
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RetrospectiveGoyo Montero at Staatstheater Nürnberg BR-Klassik
JUAN Mixed-Composer Ballet
Materials and Rights
This is a mixed-composer ballet / dance work including music by Lera Auerbach. The official production record lists music by Lera Auerbach, Luigi Boccherini, Cake, Arcangelo Corelli, Christoph Willibald Gluck, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Tom Waits, and others. For any future staging, performance materials, images, or video, consult the original production rights holders and relevant music publishers.
