What would you do if you had a lot of money, exquisite taste and a talent for taking pictures of nude men? Well, in Angela Christlieb's film NAKED OPERA (2013), she offers us a peak inside the world of someone who lives just so. Meet Marc. He is a unique and very wealthy man from Luxembourg who believes himself to be a real life Don Giovanni. Marc spends all his money and time in the effort to create his existence modeled after the opera while traveling all over the world to see Don Giovanni performances. He lives a lavish life surrounded by beautiful young men while staying in the world's most luxurious hotels eating and drinking only the finest of gourmet food and wine. But there is a great sadness in Marc's seemingly rich life.

While in search of the perfect Don Giovanni performance, Marc sees himself as a kind of artist errant and empathizes with other artists, Hemingway for one. Throughout the film, Marc speaks of Hemingway: “Hemingway could never afford this room. Artists are usually very poor” and “Hemingway said: 'you don't pay whores for coming, you pay them for leaving'”. Marc is himself a kind of Don Giovanni living a world of material decadence in search of something real and true, that great divine and pure love that money can never buy. When Marc feels betrayed by his lover at the end of the film, he admits: “I am so much more familiar with loving than being loved.” This real life Don Giovanni lives his life to die a hero. In the poignant and excellently eccentric documentary, NAKED OPERA, Marc shows us that all the world's wealth can never heal a wounded heart.

NAKED OPERA (2013) by Angela Christlieb screened at the 16th Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival.

View trailer here:

-Written by Vanessa McMahon