John Malkovich says Casanova was ‘probably prolific’ but not predatory

TORONTO – When two-time Oscar nominee John Malkovich agreed to play an aging Casanova in the stage show “The Giacomo Variations,” he read the lengthy and erotic memoir by the famous Italian adventurer, writer and womanizer.

After taking in the 3,700-page tome twice — first for the play and then for an upcoming film adaptation — he concluded that while Giacomo Casanova was indeed the charming legendary lover the world knows him as, he wasn’t necessarily a predator as some believe.

“I don’t really know that he was predatory, per se,” the eccentric and dry-witted star said with his distinctive, calm monotone in a recent telephone interview from Paris.

“He was probably prolific but most of the time he was in love and most of the time it was him being left.”

“The Giacomo Variations,” which made its world premiere in Vienna in 2011, has its Canadian debut at Place des Arts in Montreal on Tuesday and Wednesday. It then runs at Toronto’s Elgin Theatre June 7-9.

Michael Sturminger wrote and directed the fusion of theatre and opera with a musical concept by Martin Haselbock. The 35-piece Orchester Wiener Akademie of Vienna plays the opera music of Mozart and librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte.

The dramatic and humorous story finds an ailing Casanova at age 73 (the same age of his death in 1798), working as a librarian, writing his memoirs and eyeing the women in the chateau of Count von Waldstein in northern Bohemia, Czech Republic.

Malkovich, who has helped edit the show’s script, said Casanova’s memoir “may or may not have a sizable percentage of fiction in it” but he did get the sense that “he was someone who was quite often in love.”

His most significant relationship was said to be with a French woman he referred to as Henriette in his memoir. Malkovich said the promiscuous globetrotter probably held her in such high regard “only because she left.”

“Had she stayed there, I don’t really have any reason to think it would have lasted any longer than it did, or not so much longer than it did,” said the Illinois native, whose best-supporting-actor Oscar nods were for “In the Line of Fire” and “Places in the Heart.”

The show also references the Venetian’s “short, rather tortured and intense relationship” with a young girl named Catarina, who wound up pregnant in a convent and passed Casanova off to a “very attractive nun.”

Then there was the ill-fated tryst with a young women he met via the count of Naples.

Malkovich said Casanova fell madly in love with her, “and apparently she with him, only to find out when her mother showed up at the wedding that it was his daughter — and his daughter with obviously the girl’s mother.”

Like the Casanova in the show, Malkovich has found himself meditating more on death.

“At a certain age of course that’s a much bigger factor than it was even 10 years ago or 20 years ago, because you know it’s coming,” said the Emmy Award winner, whose other film credits include “The Killing Fields,” “Dangerous Liaisons” and “Being John Malkovich.”

“I’m 59, my father was dead at 53 (of) a heart attack.”

That’s not to say Malkovich is worried about his health. He’s mindful of what he eats and feels “fine.”

“I ride my bike hard and I do various things,” he said. “I don’t feel any worse than I did 10 or 15 years ago. But life is not a limitless proposition.”

And alas, he also recently “stupidly started to smoke again,” he said.

“Yeah, not terribly clever,” he chuckled. “Ah, such is life. I never pretended to be clever.”

Casanova is one of several libertines Malkovich has flourished in — the others include Vicomte de Valmont in the film “Dangerous Liaisons” and John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester, in the stage play “The Libertine” that he later produced as a movie.

He has also taken on opera before, with “The Infernal Comedy,” which was done with the same production team behind “The Giacomo Variations.”

The actor said he plans to do a third project with the same production team “that’s a couple of years away.” In the meantime, they’re working on a big-screen musical adaptation of “The Giacomo Variations” that they plan to start filming at the end of July in Lisbon.

Malkovich said he’ll star as Casanova alongside Veronica Ferres, with whom he worked on the 2006 film “Klimt.” Sturminger is writing the script.

“It’s a kind of movie within a play, within a movie,” he said.

Malkovich is also busy designing his own clothing line.

And he said he hopes more light-hearted roles will come his way, noting he’d love to do “Saturday Night Live” again.

“I prefer jokes and comedies but you’re cast by someone else, so it’s really what they’d prefer to see you do,” he said.

“What I prefer to do is of little interest to anybody, my career is a testament to that, if nothing else.”