"Don Giovanni" starts at Berkeley Opera tonight and funny new video of the "Catalogue Aria"

Don Giovanni starts the new season off at Berkeley Opera tonight and Jeremy Knight sent this funny new video of the catalogue aria. So Berkeleyesque, Jeremy combines this classic Mozart opera with contemporary technology by loading women in classical paintings onto Don Giovanni's iPod. Giovanni goes through the address book and ticks off each woman he has nailed. Doesn't care if they are rich, ugly or beautiful. The egalitarian, Giovanni never discriminates so it's chambermaids, princesses, fat ones in winter and thin ones in summer, rich or poor; blond or brunette (isn't this a good thing?) . . . He keeps singing the refrain with pride or disdain that already here in Spain, mille y tres, mille y tres.

What's funny about this is that in this age of Match.com it's all self-reported and unverified. Members create their own profiles. A friend of mine recently sent an article about how members not only lie about their height and age or if they have hair, but also about their gender. The new twist is the player who never actually will meet you, he will email forever and even call but never follows through. They are collectors or just passing time.

So here is the MSN article about e-lationships: On-line dating traps

Age: there's mental age and then there's chronological

When I first became single again at forty I read dating books. I distinctly remember one author advising that men will tell a whopper or two when they meet you if they really want you. So I have come to expect it. It's just too funny though when somebody says he is six feet tall and he shows up and he's about my height, 5'4". I think the lying phenomenon knows no boundaries, they can be men of stature whom you would never expect to do something like that. One female friend laughed that in response she could take ten years off of her age but face to face she would look a bit weathered for her tender age.

My first dating service experience: being the videographer

Moreover when I was going through my divorce ten years ago I used to work at a dating service in Walnut Creek and Marin County. It had a lot of trouble with the Better Business Bureau. It wasn't the lonely membership so much it was the business itself. I found the job because my future ex-husband told me he had joined a Christian dating service. I passed this service's door and stuck my head in. During the chat they found out I was a Contra Costa videographer and hired me to tape their interviews for the members' library. Sure enough, there was my husband's profile. And dating history. Sad story. Short story too, very short. However the best part about that job was talking to the members about love. Everybody has a story. Women wanted honesty and Machu Picchu. The closer men were to retirement, the less anything else mattered except day to day companionship.

A man I have dated a few times over the past year and had been falling for told me on our first date he had been looking for chemistry. We went to Teatro ZinZanni's Under the Gypsy Moon.

Teatro ZinZanni's "Under a Gypsy Moon" steals your heart and feeds your soul: Love, chaos and dinner

Chemistry, magic . . . Is that all?

From Call Me to Something's Gotta Give

As for my own love life, I always liked that movie with Genevieve Bujold called "Call Me". She played a radio relationship advice therapist who has a bleak love life of her own until this mysterious man appears out of nowhere and says he is a spy. Sure enough, he is. He rocks her nun-like world much the way my friend did mine.

I also like "Something's Gotta Give" with Diane Keaton and Jack Nicholson with Keanu Reeves. Boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl . . . she's a playwright in the meantime and has Jack killed off in her hit play after first putting him in a hospital gown. Kind of like writing a blog on Don Giovanni.

All I can say is, if you get them to see you face to face, you can confront the issue head on and stop wasting your valuable time.

One final comment, even Tiger Woods has publicly apologized although he has gone down irrevocably in history. Beach Blanket Babylon skewers the deserving from Tiger Woods to presidents

Meanwhile here is the funny new video from Berkeley Opera, which stars former Adler fellow Eugene Brancoveanu in the title role, starting tonight. Good luck.

"Madamina, il catalogo è questo" (also known as The Catalogue Aria) from Mozart's "Don Giovanni." Animation by Jeremy Knight. Sung by Igor Vieira. Berkeley Opera production, February 2010. Musical...

For more information: www.BerkeleyOpera.org

Don Giovanni opens with new performing arts center; new crew

More on things Mozartian:

Mozart's Abduction from the Seraglio: Growing up by choosing love and independence

Cornelius Meister makes opera debut in US with The Abduction from the Seraglio

Cornelius Meister on Oktoberfest at Opera at the Baseball Park

Mozart's school for lovers staged by Merolini: the tricks you play

SF Opera Program's Merolini stage romantic comedy by Mozart

For more from this writer, check out the SF theater column at: http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-30274-SF-Theater-Examiner

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