Roddy Doyle is going from Roy Keane to Don Giovanni with his translation of Mozart’s opera

Roddy Doyle approached his translation of Mozart’s opera in a similar way to his book with the footballer, writes Alan O’Riordan

HE’S no opera buff, Roddy Doyle, but he’s spent the last year translating Mozart’s Don Giovanni for a new ‘staging’ by Opera Theatre Company. “An awful word,” he says.

Famously a music nut, Doyle has been a classical listener since his early days as a writer, but is a relatively recent convert to opera. “I don’t go out of my way to educate myself about it,” he says. “I don’t do my homework, so when I go to an opera, I don’t have a clue what it will be about. I go to enjoy the experience. I probably go to far less operas than I go to rock gigs, but, on the other hand, there are far less of them, but I do enjoy it.”