Don Giovanni (The Opera Journeys Mini Guide Series)

Don Giovanni

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Don Giovanni Il dissoluto Punito “Don Juan, The Rake Punished” A dramma giocoso Italian opera in Two Acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte Premiere in Prague, 1787 Adapted from the Opera Journeys Lecture Series by Burton D. Fisher

Story Synopsis Principal Characters in the Opera Story Narrative with Music Highlights Mozart and Don Giovanni

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Story Synopsis The opera story involves a 24-hour period in which Don Giovanni’s attempts at seduction encounter interference from avenging victims of his misdeeds: they all seek divine retribution and punishment for the dissolute rake. Don Giovanni has surreptitiously entered the apartment of Donna Anna. Her screams bring forth her father, the Commendatore, who challenges the intruding stranger to a duel. Don Giovanni kills the Commendatore, and the grieving daughter, Donna Anna, swears revenge. Country villagers celebrate the forthcoming marriage between Zerlina and Masetto. Don Giovanni hosts a party for the villagers so that he can have an opportunity to seduce Zerlina, but he is thwarted in his attempts by the arrival of the avenging Donna Anna, her fiance Don Ottavio, and Donna Elvira, one of his earlier conquests whom he later abandoned. Leporello, in his master’s disguise, courts Donna Elvira so that Don Giovanni can seduce her maid, but a group of vengeful villagers foil his adventure. Don Giovanni and Leporello escape to a cemetery where a Stone Statue of the dead Commendatore arises and demands that the licentious womanizer repent for his sins. Don Giovanni invites the Stone Statue to dinner, refuses the Commendatore’s demand to repent, and unable to free himself from the grasps of the Stone Statue, is engulfed by the flames of Hell.

Principal Characters in the Opera Don Giovanni, a licentious Spanish nobleman Baritone Leporello, his servant Baritone Donna Anna, a noble lady Soprano The Commendatore, Donna Anna’s father Bass Don Ottavio, Donna Anna’s fiance Tenor Donna Elvira, a noble lady from Burgos, abandoned by Giovanni Soprano Zerlina, a peasant girl Soprano Masetto, Zerlina’s fiance Baritone TIME and PLACE: Seville, the 17th Century

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Story Narrative with Music Highlights Don Giovanni’s Overture begins highly dramatically with solemn, imposing music that foretells the tragedy: it is the music of the Commendatore’s death and the Stone Statue; in the finale of the opera, the Commendatore arrives at Giovanni’s banquet and leads him into the fires of Hell. Musically, an andante emerges from the key of D minor and develops into a brilliant allegro in D major, establishing the opera’s subtle balance between comedy, humor, and tragedy: the Overture suggests musically that justice is in pursuit of the mercurial seducer. Act I – Scene 1: Outside Donna Anna’s house at night Don Giovanni, a noble of Spain, has set forth on a daring adventure and has broken into the house of Don Pedro, the Commandant of Seville, (the Commendatore), intending to seduce his daughter, Donna Anna. Leporello waits outside, doing sentry duty for his master, and with rebellious indignation, comments on his dreadful fate as a servant to his picaresque master. “Notte e giorno faticar” (“Night and day I am tortured”) Don Giovanni is seen fleeing the palace, pursued by Donna Anna who is desperately trying to unmask the seducer, swearing he will pay dearly for his transgression. After hearing Donna Anna’s screams, the Commendatore appears sword in hand to defend his daughter. The Commendatore challenges the stranger, and in reluctant self-defense, Giovanni mortally wounds the Commendatore. Seemingly unmoved by the corpse on the ground, Giovanni flees the scene. Donna Anna, horrified by her father’s death, joins with her fiance, Don Ottavio, to swear revenge against the murderer, both expressing their relentless determination to pursue the unknown criminal and bring him to justice. Donna Anna expresses her revenge and condemnation of her assailant. Donna Anna: “Fuggi crudele”

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Act I - Scene 2: A street at dawn Don Giovanni and Leporello roam the city in search of new conquests. Donna Elvira is seen alighting from a coach and is heard expressing sadness, hope, and eventually outrage as she laments the treachery of her faithless lover, Don Giovanni. She is determined to find him, force him to return to her, and if she fails, she threatens to inflict terrible torture on him. Elvira comments about her betrayal and her obsessive mission: “Ah! Chi mi dice mai quel barbaro dov’é?” (“Ah! How shall I discover where this barbarian lives?”) Don Giovanni, unaware of the woman’s identity, approaches the lady in distress, and before he can offer her consolation, finds to his consternation that she is none other than Donna Elvira of Burgos, the woman he had spurned some time ago; likewise, Elvira recognizes Giovanni. Giovanni tries to persuade her that he had justifiable reasons for abandoning her, but Elvira refuses to believe her betrayer nor accept his explanations. Giovanni manages to escape the scene, leaving Leporello to provide Elvira with an explanation. Leporello pleads with the spurned woman to dispel her anger: she is far from the first nor the last woman to be jilted by his master. With pride, Leporello reads her his master’s bulky catalogue of conquests and seductions: in Italy 640, Germany 231, France 100, Turkey 91, but in Spain 1003. Leporello: “Madamina! Il catalogo è questo”

Leporello further explains to Donna Elvira that all women appeal to his master, young or old, portly or slender. “It’s his mission to win them all. And you, O lady, are aware that he succeeds!” He tries to persuade Donna Elvira that his master is unworthy of her passion, and then runs off, leaving the spurned and disheartened Elvira alone in grief.

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Act I - Scene 3: In the countryside near Don Giovanni’s palace Country folk sing, dance, and praise the joys of life and love. Don Giovanni learns of the approaching marriage between Zerlina and Masetto, and generously decides to place the marriage under his “protection.” Giovanni has become enamored with Zerlina, envisions her as his next conquest, and invites all the peasants to his castle, including the bridegroom, Masetto. Discretion becomes the better part of valor for the protesting Masetto as Leporello escorts him away. Masetto vents his frustration as he accedes to authority: “ Ho capito, Signor, sì” (“Yes, my lord, I understand you.”) Alone with Zerlina, Giovanni tries to seduce her with a serenade, surprising her with his suggestion that he would marry her, and then suggests that they go to a little house on the estate where they can be alone. Giovanni and Zerlina: “Là ci darem la mano, là mi dirai di si”

Just as Zerlina is about to surrender to the seductive charms of Don Giovanni, Donna Elvira suddenly appears. She congratulates herself on arriving at such an opportune time to save an innocent girl, and proceeds to denounce the profligate Giovanni. Zerlina anxiously asks Giovanni if Elvira’s accusations are true, and he explains that the poor unfortunate woman is in love with him, and because he is kindhearted and selfless, he must humor her with the pretense that he loves her. Elvira warns Zerlina to beware of this man who will betray her with lies and worthless promises. With indignation, Elvira seizes Zerlina and leads her away under her protection, warning her that she must defend her honor against the lecherous nobleman. Donna Elvira: “ Ah! Fuggi il traditor!”

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Don Ottavio and Donna Anna arrive, but Anna does not recognize her assailant from the night before and unwittingly solicits Giovanni’s help and friendship. But before Giovanni can ask the reason for her request, Donna Elvira suddenly reappears, crying out dramatically: “So, I find you again, perfidious monster!” Elvira proceeds to warn Anna not to have faith in this man who would betray her: “Non ti fidar, o misera” (“Do not have faith in this miserable man.”) Donna Anna and Don Ottavio become moved by Donna Elvira’s tears: Giovanni tells them in an aside that the poor woman is mad, and perhaps he can calm her. But Donna Anna and Don Ottavio become confused and do not know whom to believe. Elvira storms away, and Giovanni quickly announces that he must follow the poor unfortunate woman: his excuse to bid farewell to Anna and Ottavio. Donna Anna has a revelation and is now convinced, through Giovanni’s voice and manner, that she recognizes her assailant and her father’s murderer from the night before. She proceeds to narrate the details of the evening to Don Ottavio, and then beseeches Ottavio to join her in revenge. Donna Anna: “Or sai chi l’onore rapire a me volse”

After Anna’s furious proclamations of vendetta, revenge, she storms away, leaving Ottavio alone to reflect. He has never heard of a cavaliere capable of so black a crime, and swears by his duty as lover and friend to vindicate Donna Anna’s honor: “Dalla sua pace la mia dipende” (“On her peace of mind mine too depends; what pleases her gives joy to me.”)

Act I - Scene 4: A terrace before Don Giovanni’s castle Don Giovanni, obsessed in his pursuit of Zerlina, has invited all the peasants to his castle for a night of merriment. Giovanni, in the exuberant Champagne aria, commands Leporello to round up the guests for the party.

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Don Giovanni: “Finch’han dal vino calda”

Meanwhile, Zerlina and Masetto argue, her fiance accusing her of being unfaithful and abandoning him on their wedding day. Zerlina claims innocence, and tries to pacify her outraged and jealous fiance. Zerlina: “Batti, batti, o bel Masetto”

Don Giovanni arrives in an expansive and hospitable mood, finds Zerlina, and persuades her to disappear with him into the arbor, but his intrigue is thwarted when he finds the implacable Masetto hiding there. In frustration, Giovanni escorts them both to his ball in the castle. Suddenly, a trio of masked avengers arrives: Donna Anna, Don Ottavio, and Donna Elvira, all determined to invade the ball, capture Don Giovanni, expose his wickedness, and punish him. Leporello, believing that the three figures are guests in masquerade, on Giovanni’s instructions, welcomes them in to the ball.

Act I - Scene 5: The ballroom in Don Giovanni’s castle The Minuet:

The three masked avengers have joined the dancing at the ball. Don Giovanni becomes preoccupied with his attempt to seduce the apprehensive Zerlina, coerces her, and both disappear through one of the doors of the ballroom. When Zerlina screams, the dancing stops, the peasants hurriedly leave the scene, and the three masked avengers break down the door to rescue Zerlina. Zerlina is returned to safety and the avengers advance upon Don

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Giovanni, crying out: “Tremble! Soon the whole world will know of your black and terrible deed and of your inhuman cruelty. Hark to the thunder of vengeance!” Giovanni firmly announces that he fears nothing and nobody, forces his way past the avengers, and escapes with his faithful servant Leporello.

Act II - Scene 1: In front of Donna Elvira’s house In a moment of pleading righteousness, Leporello threatens to leave Giovanni’s service, urging his master to give up his wasteful existence, but Giovanni’s philosophical explanation that seduction is the bread of his life, together with money, assuage the rebellious servant. Don Giovanni has now become fascinated with Donna Elvira’s maid. To clear the way for this new adventure, he must draw Elvira away: Giovanni and Leporello exchange cloaks and hats; in the disguise of his master, Leporello will court Elvira. Elvira appears at her window, and reflects on her bewildered feelings, praying that her heart stops yearning for the man she knows is a liar and deceiver, but whom she still loves and cannot give up. Giovanni takes a position behind Leporello, now dressed in his master’s cloak and hat, and Giovanni, the voice behind Leporello, answers the vulnerable Elvira with seductive flattery and endearments, prayers for forgiveness, and promises of true love. Elvira falls into Giovanni’s trap, and imagines the voice she hears belongs to the figure she mistakes for Giovanni: her resistance and defenses break down, and she descends from her balcony to join the man she thinks is her lover. Elvira passionately embraces her lover (Leporello); the servant thoroughly enjoying the charade and the impersonation of his master. Giovanni creates a disturbance, Leporello’s cue to flee with the frightened Elvira. With Elvira gone, Giovanni is left alone to serenade Elvira’s maid in peace. Don Giovanni: “Deh vieni alla finestra, o mio tesoro”

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Don Giovanni’s attempted romantic escapade with Elvira’s maid is interrupted by a band of armed peasants in search of him: their leader is the pistol-waving Masetto. But Giovanni, still in the disguise of his servant, Leporello, is taken into their confidence and proceeds to give them false directions to find the rascal: the peasants proceed to scatter throughout the city in search of Giovanni. Giovanni remains behind with Masetto and invites him to show him his weapons. When the naïve Masetto hands over his musket and pistol, he is defenseless, and Giovanni thrashes him before disappearing into the night. Zerlina arrives and discovers an unhappy Masetto groaning in pain. She gives him solace, and promises him a cure that will restore him to health: the cure is her love. Zerlina: “Vedrai, carino, se sei bonino”

Act II - Scene 2: A courtyard before Donna Anna’s house Leporello leads the apprehensive Elvira into a darkened courtyard to seek refuge from their pursuers. Donna Anna, Don Ottavio, and then Zerlina and Masetto appear, all of them still in search of Don Giovanni. They believe they have discovered him (Leporello in disguise) and demand death to the perfidious villain. They are about to kill the unfortunate servant, but with terrified pleas and supplications, Leporello dissuades them, and then miraculously escapes. Alone, Don Ottavio vows to comfort his beloved by bringing Don Giovanni to justice. Don Ottavio: “Il mio tesoro”

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Donna Elvira returns, and in a moment of self-pity, again expresses her sadness: Mi tradi quell’anima ingrata, “I was betrayed by that ungrateful soul.”

Act II - Scene 3: A cemetery with equestrian statues, among them the marble statue of the Commendatore Don Giovanni and Leporello, fugitives from all the avengers, meet in the safety of a cemetery. Suddenly, they are interrupted by a sinister voice coming from a Stone Statue: “Your jests will turn to woe before morning!” Looking around, Giovanni notices the Commendatore’s equestrian statue and commands Leporello to read its inscription: “Vengeance here awaits the villain who took my life.” Giovanni instructs Leporello to invite the Stone Statue to supper. The Statue nods its head in acceptance, and then Giovanni personally extends the invitation: the Statue accepts with a solemn “yes.” Don Giovanni, burning with defiance, goes home to prepare for the arrival of his strange guest. Leporello accompanies him, sensing a forewarning of doom.

Act II - Scene 4: A room in Donna Anna’s house Donna Anna continues to mourn for her father, advising the consoling Don Ottavio that they cannot wed until her father’s murder has been avenged. Ottavio interprets her postponement as cruelty. Donna Anna: “Non mi dir, bell’ idol mio”

Act II - Scene 5: The dining hall in Don Giovanni’s palace. In an expansive and hospitable mood, Don Giovanni prepares for a terrifying confrontation with his guest. Donna Elvira, agitated and desperate, appears to warn her beloved that he is in danger, further proving

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her love for him by forgiving him, and begging him to change his life. Elvira falls on her knees, and pleads with him to repent, but Giovanni loses patience with her, and excuses her: now spurned again, she curses him as a “horrible example of iniquity.” A knocking is heard at the door and a fearful Leporello hides under a table. Giovanni opens the door, and returns followed by the Stone Statue of the Commendatore: the Stone Statue’s entrance is accompanied by the music from the first bars of the Overture. The Stone Statue refuses Giovanni’s offer to dine with him, but grasps Giovanni’s hand and urges him to mend his ways and repent. Giovanni struggles frantically and in vain to free himself from the Statue’s grip, defiantly refusing to repent. Flames envelop the hall and voices of demons are heard: the forces of damnation denounce Don Giovanni, and with a final cry of despair, Don Giovanni is swallowed up by the fires of Hell.

Epilogue: The entire group of avengers arrive: Masetto and Zerlina, Don Ottavio and Donna Anna, and the lonely Donna Elvira, all unanimous in their lustful eagerness to show their contempt and hatred for the perfidious Don Giovanni. Leporello proceeds to provide the bloodthirsty avengers with a detailed account of the demise of his master. Donna Anna and Don Ottavio suggest that all their troubles have been resolved by divine intervention, and she advises Ottavio that she will remain in mourning for an entire year: her marriage to Ottavio will therefore be postponed and be reconsidered afterwards. Donna Elvira announces that she will retire to a convent. Zerlina and Masetto decide to return home: to dine. Leporello declares that he has but one practical alternative: he will go to the tavern and seek a new master. All join and celebrate the demise of the wrongdoer: divine justice has been victorious!

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Mozart and Don Giovanni

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olfgang Amadeus Mozart – 1756 to 1791 - was born in Salzburg, Austria. His life-span was brief, but his phenomenal musical achievements have established him as one of the most important and inspired composers in Western history: music seemed to gush forth from his soul like fresh water from a spring. With his death at the age of thirty-five, one can only dream of the musical treasures that might have materialized from his music pen. Along with Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven, Mozart is one of those three “immortals” of classical music. Superlatives about Mozart are inexhaustible: Tchaikovsky called him “the music Christ”; Haydn, a contemporary who revered and idolized him, claimed he was the best composer he ever knew; Schubert wept over “the impressions of a brighter and better life he had imprinted on our souls”; Schumann wrote that there were some things in the world about which nothing could be said: much of Shakespeare, pages of Beethoven, and Mozart’s last symphony, the forty-first. Richard Wagner, who emphasized orchestral power in his music dramas, assessed Mozart’s symphonies: “He seemed to breathe into his instruments the passionate tones of the human voice ... and thus raised the capacity of orchestral music for expressing the emotions to a height where it could represent the whole unsatisfied yearning of the heart.” Although Mozart’s career was short, his musical output was tremendous by any standard: more than 600 works that include forty-one symphonies, twenty-seven piano concertos, more than thirty string quartets, many acclaimed quintets, world-famous violin and flute concertos, momentous piano and violin sonatas, and, of course, a legacy of sensational operas. Mozart’s father, Leopold, an eminent musician and composer in his own right, became, more importantly, the teacher and inspiration to his exceptionally talented and incredibly gifted prodigy child. The young Mozart demonstrated a thorough command of the technical resources of musical composition: at age three he picked out tunes on the harpsichord; at age four he began composing; at age six he gave his first public concert; by age twelve he had written ten symphonies, a cantata,

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and an opera; at age thirteen he toured Italy, where in Rome, he astonished the music world by writing out the full score of a complex religious composition after one hearing. During the late eighteenth-century, a musician’s livelihood depended solidly on patronage from royalty and the aristocracy. Mozart and his sister, Nannerl, a skilled harpsichord player, frequently toured Europe together, and performed at the courts of Austria, England, France, and Holland. But in his native Salzburg, Austria, he felt artistically oppressed by the Archbishop and eventually moved to Vienna where first-rate appointments and financial security emanated from the adoring support of both the Empress Maria Thèrése, and later her son, the Emperor Joseph II. Opera legend tells the story of a post-performance meeting between Emperor Joseph II and Mozart in which the Emperor commented: “Too beautiful for our ears and too many notes, my dear Mozart.” Mozart replied: “Exactly as many as necessary, Your Majesty.”

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ozart said: “Opera to me comes before everything else.” During the late eighteenth-century, opera genres consisted primarily of the Italian opera seria, opera buffa, and the German singspiel. Opera seria defines the style of serious Italian operas whose subjects and themes dealt primarily with mythology, history, and Greek tragedy. In this genre, the music drama usually portrayed an heroic or tragic conflict that typically involved a moral dilemma, such as love vs. duty, and usually resolved happily with due reward for rectitude, loyalty, and unselfishness. Opera buffa was an Italian genre of comic opera that, like its predecessor, the commedia dell’arte, presented satire and parodies about real-life situations: the commedia dell’arte was a theatrical convention that evolved during the Renaissance and had been performed by troupes of strolling players; their satire and irony would ridicule every aspect of their society and its institutions through the characterization of humorous or hypocritical situations involving cunning servants, scheming doctors, and duped masters. In Mozart’s time, opera buffa was perhaps the most popular operatic form, its life continuing well into the nineteenth century in the hands of Rossini and Donizetti. German singspiel, similar to Italian opera buffa, was specifically comic opera but with spoken dialogue. Social upheavals and ideological transitions were

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brewing in Mozart’s time as the end of the eighteenth century would become inspired by the Enlightenment, and would later witness the American and French Revolutions. Mozart delighted in portraying themes in which the common man fought for his rights against the tyranny and oppression of the aristocracies. In particular, his opera buffa, The Marriage of Figaro, portrays servants more clever than their selfish, unscrupulous, and arrogant masters. Napoleon would later conclude that Marriage, both the Mozart and source Beaumarchais play, was the “Revolution in action.” Opera buffa provided a convenient theatrical vehicle in which the ideals of democracy could be expressed in art. Whereas the aristocracy identified and became flattered by the exalted personalities, gods, and heroes portrayed in the pretentious pomp and formality of the opera seria, the satire and humor of opera buffa, provided an arena to express the frustrations of the lower classes of society. Mozart wrote over eighteen operas, among them: Bastien and Bastienne (1768); La finta semplice (1768); Mitridate, Rè di Ponto (1770); Ascanio in Alba (1771); Il Sogno di Scipione (1772); Lucio Silla (1772); La Finta Giardiniera (1774); Idomeneo, Rè di Creta (1781); Die Entführung aus dem Serail (The Abduction from the Seraglio) (1782); Der Schauspieldirektor (1786); Le Nozze di Figaro, (The Marriage of Figaro) (1786); Don Giovanni (1787); Così fan tutte (1790); Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) (1791); La Clemenza di Tito (1791).

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uring Mozart’s time, the Italians set the international standards for opera: Italian was the universal language of music and opera, and Italian opera was what Mozart’s Austrian audiences and most of the rest of Europe wanted most. Therefore, even though Mozart was an Austrian, his country part of the German Holy Roman Empire, most of Mozart’s operas were written in Italian. His most popular Italian operas were: The Marriage of Figaro, “Le Nozze di Figaro,” an opera buffa that represented his first collaboration with his most famous librettist, Lorenzo Da Ponte; Don Giovanni, technically an opera buffa but designated a dramma giocoso, a “humorous drama” or “playful play,” essentially a combination of both the opera buffa and opera seria genres; Così fan tutte, “Thus do all women behave,” another blend of the opera seria with the opera buffa,

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and Mozart’s last opera, La Clemenza di Tito, “The Clemency of Titus,” an opera seria commissioned to celebrate the coronation in Prague of the Emperor Leopold II as King of Bohemia. Nevertheless, Italians have historically shunned Mozart’s Italian works, claiming they were not “Italian” enough; a La Scala production of a Mozart “Italian” opera is a rare event. Mozart’s most popular German operas are: Die Zauberflöte, “The Magic Flute,” and Die Entführung aus dem Serail, “The Abduction from the Seraglio.” Both operas are stylistically singspiel works. Mozart’s operas receive the same extravagant praise as his instrumental music, but Mozart’s characterizations are considered to capture a sublime unity of both the smiles and tears of life. To some, Don Giovanni is the finest opera ever written; some prefer The Magic Flute; and still others choose The Marriage of Figaro, and nothing could be more praiseworthy than the musicologist William Mann’s conclusion that Così fan tutte contains “the most captivating music ever composed.” The world of Mozart addicts will argue vociferously about which is his best opera: Così fan tutte, considered to be his most exquisite, sophisticated, and subtle work; The Marriage of Figaro, sometimes called the perfect opera buffa, and his most inspired because of the comic effectiveness of its political and social implications; or Don Giovanni, because of its alternation of the light and comic with the darker colors of genuine tragedy.

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ozart was unequivocal about his opera objectives: “In an opera, poetry must be altogether the obedient daughter of the music.” Nevertheless, he indeed took great care in selecting that poetry, hammering relentlessly at his librettists to be sure they produced words that could be illuminated and transcended by his music. To an opera composer of such incredible genius as Mozart, words performed through music expressed what language alone had exhausted. Musically, Mozart’s works epitomize the Classical style of the late eighteenth-century, the goal of which was to conform to specific standards and forms, to be succinct, clear, and well balanced, while at the same time, developing ideas to a point of emotionally satisfying fullness. As a quintessential Classicist, Mozart’s music combines an Italian taste for graceful melody with a German proclivity for formality and contrapuntal ingenuity.

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Mozart is considered the consummate master of translating “dramatic truth” into his music: that is the vital element in his music, a language which ingeniously portrays complex human emotions, passions, and feelings. Opera, or “music drama,” by its very nature, is essentially an art form concerned with the emotions and behavior of human beings: the success of an opera lies in its ability to convey a realistic panorama of human character through its music. Mozart understood his fellow human beings, and ingeniously translated that insight through his musical language. Mozart’s ingenious ability to bare the soul of his characters was almost Shakespearean: his musical characterizations are truthful representations of universal humanity; in those characterizations, we sense virtues, aspirations, inconsistencies, peculiarities, flaws and foibles. Mozart virtually tells it like it is, rarely suggesting any puritanical judgment or moralization of his characters’ behavior and actions, prompting Beethoven to lament that in Don Giovanni and Marriage, Mozart had squandered his genius on immoral and licentious subjects. Nevertheless, that spotlight on the individual makes Mozart a bridge between eighteenth and nineteenth century operas. Before him, in the opera seria genre, operas portrayed abstract emotion. But Mozart was anticipating the transition to the Romantic movement and its accent on sentiments and feelings that was to begin soon after his death. As such, Mozart’s characterizations made opera come alive by endowing his characters with definite and distinctive musical personalities. In earlier works, like Gluck’s opera serias, the dramatic form would imitate the style of the Greek theater: an individual’s passions and the dramatic situations would generally transfer to the chorus for either narration, commentary, or summation. But Mozart replaced those theatrical devices, and brilliantly portrayed the interaction between the characters themselves, particularly in his ensembles: his ensembles are almost symphonic in grandeur, moments in which an individual character’s emotions, passions, feelings, and reactions stand out in high relief. Mozart was therefore the first composer to perceive clearly the vast possibilities of the operatic form as a means of musically creating characters: great and small characters who moved, thought, and breathed on the human level; Mozart’s characters discard the masks of

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Greek drama and appear as individuals with recognizable personalities. Those extraordinary, insightful, musical characterizations, are ingenious portrayals of real and complex humanity in their conduct and character. As a consequence, audiences have been enthralled for over two-hundred years with his characterizations: Don Giovanni’s Donna Anna, Donna Elvira, Zerlina, Masetto, Leporello, and Don Giovanni himself; The Marriage of Figaro’s Count and Countess, Cherubino, Susanna, and Figaro. All Mozart characters are profoundly human: they act with passion, yet they retain those special Mozartian qualities of dignity and sentiment. In the end, like Shakespeare, Mozart’s characterizations have become timeless representations of humanity. His opera characterizations are as contemporary in the twentieth-century as they were in the later part of the eighteenth century, even though costumes, and even some customs may have changed. So Count Almaviva, in The Marriage of Figaro, attempting to exercise his feudal right of droit du seigneur, may be no different than a wealthy twentieth century chief executive living in his Connecticut mansion: legally forbidden to bed his illegal alien housekeeper against her wishes. To achieve those spectacular results in musical characterization, Mozart became a magician in developing and using various techniques in his musical language in order to portray and communicate passions such as envy, revenge, or noble love. He expressed those qualities through distinguishing melody, through the specific qualities of certain key signatures, through rhythm, tempo, pitch, and even through accent and speech inflection. Mozart excels in his genius for using musical keys for effect; often, G major is the key for rustic life and the common people; D minor, appearing solemnly in the Overture and final scene of Don Giovanni, is his key for Sturm und Drang, (storm and stress); A major, the seductive key for sensuous love scenes. When characters are in trouble, they sing in keys far removed from the home key: as they get out of trouble, they return to that key, reducing the tension. Mozart’s theatrical genius in his ability to express those truly human qualities in music endows his character creations with a universal and sublime uniqueness; in the end, an incomparable immortality for both composer and his achievements.

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The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte, were composed during the late eighteenth century social and political upheavals. This Da PonteMozart trilogy satirically deals with despicable aspects of human character whose transformation was the very focus of the Enlightenment idealism which precipitated the French Revolution itself. The engines that drive the plots of The Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni are the moral foibles and peccadillos of aristocratic men: Count Almaviva and Don Giovanni are the nobility who can almost be perceived by modern standards as criminals: men who are unstable, wildly libidinous, and men who feel themselves above the law. Similarly, in Così fan tutte, the actions of the women can be perceived as transcending moral law. The themes of all three works focus on seduction: seduction that ends in hapless failure: On Mozart’s stage, these flawed individuals stand in the center of a symbolic ideological bridge between the eighteenth century Enlightenment and nineteenth century Romanticism, so the actions of these despicable men represent a subtle forecast to those social upheavals and perhaps the greatest ideological transition in Western history: the demise of the ancien regime. In Mozart’s Don Giovanni and The Marriage of Figaro, social classes clash on the stage with sentiment and insight: Mozart’s musical characterizations range in his operas from underdogs to demigods, but when he deals with peasants and the lower classes, he is subtle, compassionate, and loving. So Mozart’s heroes become those bright characters who occupy the lower stations, those Figaros, Susannas, and Zerlinas, characters whom he ennobles with poignant musical portrayals of their complex personal emotions, feelings, hope, sadness, envy, passion, revenge, and eternal love.

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he commission for Don Giovanni followed the triumphant productions of The Marriage of Figaro in both Vienna and Prague in 1786. Although those Don Juan plays, which had derived from legends, were considered by the aristocracy to have descended to the level of vulgarity, Prague was not directly under the control of the imperial Hapsburgs. Therefore, censorship and restriction of underlying elements of its story was limited, if nonexistent.

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For Don Giovanni, Mozart again chose as his librettist that peripatetic scholar and entrepreneur, the man who had supplied the texts for The Marriage of Figaro, and later Così fan tutte, Lorenzo da Ponte, that erstwhile crony of the notorious Casanova de Seingalt, reputedly his assistant for selected sections of the Don Giovanni libretto. Da Ponte was born in Italy in 1749, and died in America in 1838. He was born Emmanuel Conegliano, converted from Judaism, and was later baptized, taking the name da Ponte in honor of the Bishop of Ceneda. Da Ponte would take holy orders in 1773, but seminary life failed: his subsequent picaresque life as described in his biography bears an uncanny resemblance to that of his libertine romantic hero, Don Giovanni. Da Ponte was always involved in scandals and intrigues, at one time banished from Venice, and later forced to leave England under threat of imprisonment for financial difficulties. In 1805, he came to the United States, taught Italian at Columbia University where he introduced the Italian classics to America, and later became an opera impresario who in 1825, may have been the first to present Italian opera in the United States. In Da Ponte’s haughty Extract from the Life of Lorenzo Da Ponte (1819), he explains why Mozart chose him as his inspirational poet: “Because Mozart knew very well that the success of an opera depends, first of all, on the poet…..that a composer, who is, in regard to drama, what a painter is in regard to colors, can never do without effect, unless excited and animated by the words of a poet, whose province is to choose a subject susceptible of variety, movement, and action, to prepare, to suspend, to bring about the catastrophe, to exhibit characters interesting, comic, well supported, and calculated for stage effect, to write his recitativo short, but substantial, his airs various, new, and well situated; and his fine verses easy, harmonious, and almost singing of themselves…..” Certainly, in Da Ponte’s librettos for Mozart operas, he indeed ascribed religiously to those literary and dramatic disciplines and qualities he so eloquently described and congratulated himself for in his autobiography.

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oethe testified to the popularity and drawing power of the Don Giovanni stories among the common people when he witnessed an opera on the subject in Rome in 1787: “There could not have been a soul alive

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(in Rome, right down to the greengrocer and his children) who had not seen Don Juan roasting in Hell, and the Commendatore, as a blessed spirit, ascending to Heaven.” Don Juan legends and myths trace their genesis, like the Faust story, to the exploits of a personage who actually lived. The tale concerns itself with Don Juan, a member of the noble Tenorio family who in the fourteenth century, is reputed to have been a perpetrator of plots against all of the womanhood of Seville. The first play to reach the stage was by the Spanish dramatist, Gabriel Tellez (1584-1648), who wrote under the pseudonym Tirso de Molina: his play, El Burlador de Sevilla y Convivado de Piedra, “The Rake of Seville and the Stone Guest.” In the play’s finale, Don Juan brazenly invites the Stone Guest to dine with him, and to his consternation, the statue accepts and bids that they dine in a nearby chapel: the dishes at their supper contain scorpions and snakes, the wine is gall and verjuice, the table music a penitential psalm, and then the statue vanishes, and Don Juan is consigned to Hell. Also providing underlying fabric for the ultimate Da Ponte/Mozart story are Molière’s Le Festin de Pierre (1665), “The Feast of Stone,” or its equivalent, Righini’s Il convitato di pietra ossia Il dissoluto punito (1776), the German Comödie Das steinerne Gastmahl (1760), and Gluck’s pantomime ballet Don Juan, ou Le festin de pierre (1761). Moliére’s play, in particular, aroused great controversy owing to the religious and social questions explored: Don Juan’s atheism and lack of gallantry toward the poor was deemed to be un-Catholic and un-Spanish, not to mention his sins of rape and seduction. The eighteenth-century plays of the very popular Carlo Goldoni were noted for their wit and skill in satirizing social pretension, and Goldoni himself treated the subject in his play, Don Giovanni Tenorio, o sia Il dissoluto (1736), his particular innovations that Donna Anna was betrothed to Don Ottavio against her will, and the introduction of Donna Elvira, the presumably mad woman who continuously interferes with the protagonist’s seductive adventures. However, Da Ponte’s basic framework for his libretto for Mozart’s opera was Bertati’s contemporary one-act opera, Don Giovanni, or sia il convitato di pietra (1787), musically scored by Giuseppe Gazzaniga, a highly prolific and esteemed opera composer. Don Juan stories about the libertine rake of legend

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were from their very beginnings extremely popular medieval morality plays. Certainly, during the Godcentered Middle Ages when society literally lived between hell and damnation, it became a popular vehicle for strolling puppet theaters whose audiences relished its allegorical struggle and conflict between the forces of good and evil. Don Juan is a rebel against conventional morality, a dissolute sinner, a promiscuous, treacherous, and murderous man, who, by the demands of a morality play, must receive divine justice and be punished. He is a fatally flawed character, yet he is a compellingly fascinating and commanding figure. Nevertheless, he is a menace and danger to society, particularly in his attractiveness to weak and vulnerable women; three of those women appear in high-relief in the Mozart/Da Ponte version, and each having her own particular obsession with him, is aware of his evil, but is ready and willing to surrender to him. Don Giovanni boldly confronts his world: a Faust committing the sin of curiosity, or a Carmen obsessed with her freedom to love whom she wants. Subconsciously, he can be viewed as an archetype of every man or woman’s alter ego, who, in their tension, desire, and craving for love, faces that eternal conflict between reason and emotion, the spirit and the flesh, or the sacred and the profane. Don Giovanni represents those powerful, uncontrollable irrational forces, and his ambivalent world confronts him in conflict: he can be either a blessing or a curse. Throughout its two-hundred year plus history, Don Giovanni has been considered “the opera of all operas,” possibly the most perfect opera ever written. It is a monumental wonder of musical imagination, a work containing towering music with unrivalled beauty, and a plot whose dramatic essence contains timeless themes; perhaps a most appropriate accolade attributable to this immortal masterpiece would be “THE opera of the second millennium.” During the late eighteenth century, the opera buffa genre was fast coming into prominence, but contrarily, the opera seria genre was en route to obsolescence. Mozart largely modeled Don Giovanni on the style of The Marriage of Figaro: it is a synthesis of the opera buffa comic style with the serious styles of opera seria. Although librettist Da Ponte wanted his scenario to be entirely comedic, a satire in the old classic tradition, Mozart perceived an inner depth in the story, and was

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determined to inject seriousness into the plot. The designation dramma in Mozart’s time signified the grander, heroic world of opera seria, while giocoso denoted “gaiety” or “frolic.” Don Giovanni was designated a dramma giocoso, a “humorous drama,” and therefore represents the compromise between composer and librettist, the resulting work containing a profound seriousness melded with riotous comedy and humor. Mozart himself would at times casually refer to the opera as an opera buffa. Don Giovanni is a tragicomedy in which boisterous laughter becomes fused with serious tears, where slapstick, farcical comedy, and humor fuse with the supernatural might of avenging providence. The blending of these two elements, in many respects, heightens the poignancy and eeriness of the tragedy. To heighten the effect of tragicomedy, like Marriage and the later Così fan tutte, the plot continuously alternates between the comic and satiric, and then quickly plunges into the darker shades of genuine tragedy; Donna Anna is a genuine opera seria personality, a woman of driving passions who portrays profound grief for her father’s death, and a relentless obsession for revenge against Don Giovanni. Donna Elvira is also essentially an opera seria character: she is a spurned woman who alternates between love, compassion, and revenge. Likewise, Don Ottavio’s noble devotion and outpourings of love are pure sentiments from the opera seria genre, and nothing could be more derivative from the opera seria than the forces of supernatural retribution when the Commendatore comes to life and leads Don Giovanni to his ultimate doom and eternal punishment. But smiles, sublime humor, and the gaiety of opera buffa are dutifully portrayed in the playful quarrels and reconciliations of Masetto and Zerlina, the Don’s thrashing of Masetto, and all of the traditional opera buffa servant Leporello’s comic relief: his wit and humor in the Catalogue aria: his charade and exchange of clothes with his master and its ensuing catastrophe. Don Giovanni is a man with a romantic compulsion, a cold and insensitive adventurer living a tension between desire and fulfillment. The profligate Don Giovanni is governed by a single motivation: his flaunting of society and its rules in the pursuit of sexual pleasure. Leporello ironically tells Donna Elvira about his

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master’s compulsions in the Catalogue, a moment of laughter, yet a moment of tears for the vanquished: “Women of every rank, fat or thin. Tall for majesty, small for prettiness, old women for the list’s sake, poor girl, rich girl, ugly girl, lovely girl so long as she’s a skirt, you know what happens.” Giovanni is an escapading antihero, an adventurer whose charismatic personality captivates and overwhelms all who encounter him: his victims remain in awe or shock, yet his demonic engine continues to grind steadily with a passionate ebullience and a forceful vitality. In our times, the classic Don Juan legends have passed from the realm of drama into Freudian symbolism: psychiatric jargon speaks repeatedly about the “Don Juan” complex. The hero fails to recognize his true self hiding behind his mask: there is a cold heart behind his masquerade of obsessive sexuality and amorous passion. Modern psychologists cite that his adventures hide an unconscious male fantasy, an obsession for blissful union, or reunion, with his mother. His unconscious obsessions have driven him into sexual adventures that are not the outcome of real feelings, but rather, illusory manic obsessions with sex that are the chronic symptom of a disease which is incomprehensible to him. In that context, Don Giovanni is never capable of experiencing true love, because he has erected a defense for his fear and yearning that overshadows his narcissistic selfishness and even selflessness. In effect, he is defending himself against women, running no harder after the next woman than he runs away from the last, especially if she begins to look like a threat to his defenses. So behind that facade of the swashbuckling, boudoirhopping, serial sexist, lurks a perpetual adolescent needing instant gratification; or perhaps a latent homosexual actually hating women; or perhaps an antihero intent on evil who slays an interfering father (the Commendatore) and seduces one unsatisfactory mother-image after another. It has even been suggested that Don Giovanni himself is some incarnation of a fertility god, so to attend a Don Giovanni performance is to participate in the celebration of a ritual. But in spite of modern psychological interpretations, Don Giovanni is a classical morality play: good must conquer evil. Don Giovanni cannot flaunt society’s norms with his carefree pursuit of sexual pleasure, so in the end, he must be punished and receive divine retribution;

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it becomes the man he murdered, the Commendatore, who appears to him in his metaphysical apparition, who ultimately represents the embodiment of divine law and destiny: the moral voice of righteousness. In the end, Don Giovanni’s ultimate fate is horrible and gruesome, yet he must be punished and Mozart’s genius elevates his demise to an incomparable sublimity.

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on Giovanni is the central catalyst who evokes all of the responses and actions from the other characters; when Don Giovanni acts, everyone else reacts. He is an almost opaque hero who becomes defined by those he pursues. Yet in his picaresque world, we never really know the inner soul of the hero; there are no Wagnerian-style introspective moments in the text in which Don Giovanni reveals the deep inner workings of his soul. Yet, he instinctively and intuitively knows his surrounding world and senses the vulnerability of the characters who confront him: he will exploit all of them; all of them will be humbled and humiliated; and in the process, each one will become aware of his own weaknesses and vulnerabilities. All of the characters in this drama suffer from their yearning and craving for love, but Mozart and Da Ponte shift the “wages of sin” from sinner to the sinned against. As a result, all of the characters provide a mirror in which to view the human soul in all of its anxiety and pain. In their defense, they all find a way to blame Don Giovanni, and at times, their reaction is to accuse each other of cruelty. But in truth, it is Don Giovanni who is cruel; it is Giovanni who is steadfast and resolute in his heartless and callous pursuits, and in the end, the pursued will stand dumbfounded in wonder and awe. Mozart ingeniously weaves these individual personalities for us in his music, breathes life into them, and when their heartbeats pound, we sense their feelings, sometimes comic and sometimes serious, and sometimes both.

In the three female characters in Don Giovanni, the spectrum of womanhood is rounded and rendered complete: the great opera seria characters of the avenging Donna Anna and the sentimental Elvira, and the crafty but sympathetic opera buffa peasant girl, Zerlina. Donna Anna’s character shades the opera with both

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darkness and romanticism, and it is Anna’s grief in her father’s death that is a mainspring of the drama. Mozart places total humanity in Donna Anna, the daughter of an aristocratic nobleman, and a woman completely possessed by passion. It is never quite clear whether Donna Anna was indeed seduced and raped, or willingly participated with Giovanni, or silently invited their liaison. It is a most dramatic episode when Donna Anna tells Don Ottavio that she recognizes Don Giovanni, through his voice and manner, as her father’s murderer, and her assailant from the night before. To Mozart’s eighteenth century audience, Don Giovanni had obviously taken his pleasure for there are noticeable gaps and discrepancies in her story: her explanation is far too much concerned with the attack on her honor, and far too little of her explanation is concerned with the killing of her father. Don Giovanni is a man of the chase and the kill: he has no concern for the carcass afterwards. It is speculated that Donna Anna was indeed seduced, and willingly welcomed their amorous episode, but like all of his conquests, when it was over, it was over. So the death of her father stands as a subterfuge for her more extreme passions: her revenge against a perfidious lover. Mozart’s supreme devotee, Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann, an early nineteenth-century writer whose obsession with Mozart and his opera Don Giovanni compelled him to change his third name to Amadeus, hypothesized Donna Anna’s character in one of his fantastic tales, Don Juan (1813), republished as Phantasiestucke in Callots Manier (1814). Hoffmann called Donna Anna a “divine woman over whose pure spirit evil is powerless.” Hoffmann concluded that Donna Anna was a profoundly sensuous woman who was secretly aflame with desire for Don Giovanni; it is her distinct call for revenge, Or sai chi l’onore, in which he suggests that Donna Anna had been willingly seduced by Giovanni, and was deeply in love with him. Hoffmann’s brilliant fantasy would later receive comic treatment in Shaw’s Man and Superman, interpreting Don Giovanni as the incarnation of an evolutionary “life force,” with its hero, a demonic and satanic force of evil who rises to challenge God himself. The unfortunate corollary to Hoffmann’s elevation of Donna Anna in his fantastic tale is that he makes Donna Elvira into something of a caricature, a less voluptuous specimen of womanhood than Donna Anna:

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Hoffmann introduces Elvira as the “tall, emaciated Donna Elvira, bearing visible signs of great, but faded beauty.” Da Ponte’s libretto specifies only that she be young, and Baudelaire refers to her as “the chaste and thin Elvira.” Donna Elvira was the specific creation of Moliére’s version of the legend in his Le Festin de Pierre (1665). Elvira then became a strong minded woman with complex, multidimensional, and perhaps the most profound feelings of all the female characters. Mozart’s musical portrait of Donna Elvira provides a delicate balance between sympathy and rage for a mocked and humiliated woman who is constantly tormented and degraded. Yet, Elvira brings to the fore the paradox of how quickly love and hate can be triggered: she becomes obsessed with vengeance, but at the same time, she is ever doting and willingly available as an easy conquest for Giovanni. Donna Elvira represents a magnificent portrait of a classic spurned woman: she was a former nun who was seduced by Don Giovanni while she was in a convent, and the memory of that experience has become her life’s obsession; she is determined to tear out Don Giovanni’s heart unless he returns to her. Donna Elvira is the only woman in the story who openly expresses true fidelity to Don Giovanni, and in that sense, she represents the real threat to his defenses, perhaps the reason he fights her off so cruelly. (Da Ponte even suggests that Don Giovanni married her since that was the only way he could control her.) Elvira pursues Don Giovanni with a passionate single-mindedness, her love for him not just a merely passing episode but a decisive passion. In that sense, Donna Elvira, of all the women in the opera, is the one character whose entire human essence is closest to that of Don Giovanni. Like Giovanni, she is constantly in pursuit of the ideal, craving and yearning for love. Giovanni kindled a spark in Elvira, and she shares that same consuming passion that burns in him. Elvira’s Ah! Fuggi il tradito has a passionate and fiery fury: they are cries that expose the tormented misfortune in her soul, but her final outbursts of revenge and hatred against Giovanni merely again confirm the proximity of the passions of love and hate. Nevertheless, she is determined to win back Giovanni’s love, even after she recognizes the hopelessness of her quest. Donna Elvira’s misfortune was that for her

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apparently first and only love experience became none other than the licentious Don Giovanni. It was for her, an euphoric moment, and she wants to devote her whole being, her life, love, and future to Don Giovanni, the man she refuses to abandon. Donna Elvira is a tragic, tormented figure who thirsts for tenderness, and passes from outrage and indignation to powerless defeat, despair, and illusion as she realizes that she will only be able to find solace in her memories. Don Ottavio is the great comforter and consoler, Donna Anna’s husband-to-be, a man of admirable sentiments who is constantly joining his beloved Anna in sharing her suffering and solemnly offering her solace by swearing revenge. In Donna Anna’s recognition recitative, Ottavio says that he never heard of a cavaliere capable of so black a crime, and swears by his duty as lover and friend to vindicate Anna’s honor, always listening open-mouthed and with suitable sympathy to her commentary. Ottavio is colorless, docile, yet worthy and wellmeaning: he appears as one of those dog-like followers who invariably seem to accompany desirable and voluptuous women. It appears to take him a long time to reach his conclusion about Don Giovanni’s offenses which Donna Anna reached through first hand experience. Somehow, he interprets Giovanni’s guilt based on the evidence of Giovanni’s unsuccessful seduction of Zerlina and his beating of Masetto: none of his conclusions would pass the test of the “smoking gun,” and he certainly does not want to face the truth that his Donna Anna had been violated. Zerlina is ambivalent: she is either an innocent country girl, or a saucy, wily, and ever-so-omniscient flirt; Mozart’s music for her is always full of a sense of guile and trickery. When Don Giovanni sings his serenade to Zerlina, “Là ci darem la mano,” Mozart’s music dissolves any animosity toward Don Giovanni as he magically characterizes his aristocratic bearing contrasted against Zerlina’s pastoral shyness. It is a masterly instance of Giovanni’s insincerity, but Zerlina nevertheless believes all of his expansive talk about the “honesty painted in their eyes.” Mozart’s cynical eighteenth century audience would have certainly laughed at her innocence and gullibility, but they would also have laughed as they anticipated the villain’s discomfort.

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“Là ci darem la mano” is a wonderfully sensuous and exquisite musical scene in which both parties seem to be irresistible to each other, both displaying subtle explosions of physical attraction and chemistry. Zerlina vacillates with indecision. She wants to, and doesn’t want to, but feels herself weakening: their Andiam contains a sense of sublime excitement and pleasure. Zerlina later uses her irresistible charm to console Masetto after his thrashing, and just like Giovanni, she exploits his exaggeration of his injuries with irresistible arguments: love will resolve everything. Zerlina’s “Batti, batti o mio Masetto,” is a light and lovely moment of supreme opera buffa. Leporello can be viewed as a direct descendant of the Commedia dell’arte tradition, the standard satirical portrayal of the comic servant, and the supreme example of the opera buffa character portraying mock anxieties: his rebellious indignation when he complains sarcastically and bitterly about the conditions of his employment with his libertine master - irregular meals, lack of sleep, constant waiting around in wind and rain; his cynical congratulations to his master on successfully concluding the seduction of a daughter and the elimination of a father; his horror at the death of the Commendatore, an eccesso, or excess that was provoked and certainly the last thing he or his master ever intended; his anxious patter combined with genuine pathos as he begs for pity from Giovanni’s avengers; his compassion for Elvira when he tries to persuade her – through the Catalogue – of his master’s unworthiness, that she is not the first nor the last of his master’s conquests; and, of course, his pride in describing his master’s preferences and adventures. In his moments of righteous indignation, when he tells his master point blank that he considers him to be leading a wastrel’s life and he threatens to leave his service, resolution and loyalty quickly return with Giovanni’s bonus compensation. But imitation is the greatest form of flattery, and when Leporello is among the peasants, he imitates his master’s habits and mannerisms, and is hopeful that among so many young women, there might be something for him too. He relishes his moments as a Don Giovanni in training, although it is an exaggerated moment; he obviously enjoys the charade and impersonation of his master as he woos Donna Elvira: “Son per voi tutta foco” (“I’m all fire for you.”) The Leporello character is a magnificent blend of

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wit, a fusion of the comic and serious, and quintessential opera buffa. The entrance of the three masked characters provides a magnificent moment for ambivalent meaning, arcane subtext, and variety in interpretation. As the three masked characters – Donna Anna, Donna Elvira, and Don Ottavio – arrive at Don Giovanni’s party, the music and text explode with the strains of viva la libertà. (Da Ponte withheld this portion of the opera when he submitted it to the censors.) For each character, liberty may have a different meaning. For Don Giovanni himself, liberty is perhaps his right to exploit his surrounding world; he certainly at that moment has accomplished his goal by inducing everyone to his castle, if only for the opportunity to seduce Zerlina. For Leporello, liberty could define his freedom to emulate the licentious actions of his master. For Zerlina, liberty could mean a higher social status, something she disingenuously believes she could achieve by spending a night with the aristocratic Don Giovanni. For Masetto, liberty could mean his right to fight for justice and what is right. And for those three masked characters, liberty is their freedom to enter into Don Giovanni’s iniquitous world and unmask, expose, and punish the horrible seducer and murderer.

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he banquet scene of Don Giovanni is a great tourde-force of the lyric theater. In a magnificent blend of the comic and tragic, the Stone Statue of the Commendatore invades Giovanni’s banquet; panic erupts as Donna Elvira flees, and Leporello hides under the table. Don Giovanni confronts the terrifying Statue with ferocious courage. In this symbolic defining moment, Don Giovanni stops running away from himself, and is forced to look inward: he invites the Stone Statue to dine with him. When Don Giovanni grasps the Stone Statue, symbolically, he feels an unmistakable coldness, perhaps the inhuman coldness lurking within his subconscious. And symbolically again, he cannot free himself from the grasp of the Stone Statue, even as flames rise up around him; nevertheless, Giovanni remains resolute and will not repent his dissolute life. Mozart’s music inventiveness, the scoring of this moment in the chilling and frightening D minor key, the

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same tragic sounding key and chords heard in the Overture and when the Commendatore was mortally wounded in Act I, provides a brilliant musical portrait of that defining moment in which an eternal universal sinner is about to receive divine retribution for his transgressions. Don Giovanni is doomed to Hell: he is supposed to experience those same transforming fires that mythological heroes and images of our collective unconscious have passed in order to achieve a transformation; a transcendence and epiphany, a return to the world with new insight, understanding, awareness, and compassion. In its moral sense, Don Giovanni must repent in order to achieve a new understanding so that he learns that stone symbolizes coldness and nothingness; that within the interaction of humanity, there must be warmth, feeling, true love, and compassion. But Don Giovanni is resolute and does not experience a transformation; therefore, his demise becomes cathartic and one is purged and overcome with pity. In its most compelling supernatural extreme, avenging devils drag the unrepentant sinner to eternal punishment. Don Giovanni represented archetypal evil: he was cruel, seductive, coarse, and arrogant. But Don Giovanni’s appeal is that even though the dissolute transgressor foresaw his irrevocable damnation, he certainly was unequivocally courageous and resolute in his refusal to repent, to become anything other than his reprobate self. In the end, Don Giovanni’s final damnation represents justice for all of his sins, transgressions, and misdeeds. Mozart unhesitatingly treats those forces of supernatural retribution with great solemnity and seriousness: Don Giovanni, after all, in so many senses represents the eternal tragedy of all humanity. Nevertheless, Mozart lightened the profound seriousness of the final tragedy, and removed the sting from the hero’s grotesque fate and descent into Hell: the final sextet can be seen as either a vaudeville ending to the tragedy, or a moralizing emphasis. The remaining six characters arrive on stage and address the audience, presumably announcing that with the demise of Don Giovanni, life has returned to normalcy. Don Giovanni was the classic sinner, the all-time rake who challenged authority, challenged society, and thus challenged God. The survivors tell us that justice has been served, and society has been purged of his

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seductive and destructive power. But Don Giovanni achieved immortality: he may be gone, but he will never be forgotten.

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mitation is the greatest form of flattery. Don Giovanni, more than any other opera except perhaps Tristan und Isolde, has caught the imagination of artists, composers, poets, philosophers, psychologists, men of letters, and music lovers. The Mozart-DaPonte Don Giovanni story has left a legacy of inspired treatments from Byron, Baudelaire, Mérimée, Pushkin, and Tolstoy. The overworked and exploited Beethoven, in his Diabelli Variations, sneered at his publishers with Leporello’s “Notte e giorno faticar” (“Night and day I am worked to death.”) In the Prologue to Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffmann, there is an underlying suggestion that the whole work is on one level an exegesis of Mozart’s opera. Don Ottavio’s aria, “Il mio tesoro” (“My treasure”), was an early recording sung by John McCormack that supposedly became the most prominent early phonograph recording. Beethoven and Chopin wrote variations on the duet, “Là ci darem la mano”; Liszt includes this music prominently in his Don Juan fantasy; in the film version of Dorian Grey, the hero is compelled to hear “Là ci darem la mano” as he embarks on his first seduction; and in James Joyce’s Ulysses, the music haunts the cuckolded Leopold Bloom after he hears his wife singing it to her lover as they advance toward sexual conclusion.

Mozart’s Don Giovanni was a spectacular triumph in Prague, receiving more performances than The Marriage of Figaro in 1786, and becoming, after Die Entführung aus dem Serail, the Mozart opera most performed in his lifetime. Since its premiere, nearly every opera singer of note has been associated with one of the main roles in Don Giovanni. Rossini, upon seeing the Don Giovanni score for the first time, fell to his knees, kissed the music, and exclaimed of Mozart: “He was God himself.” Goethe claimed that only Mozart, the man who had written Don Giovanni, was capable of setting his masterpiece, Faust, to music. Gounod, a composer who did set Faust to music, said of Don Giovanni: “It has been a revelation all my life. For me it is a kind of incarnation of dramatic and musical perfection.” Wagner would ask: “Is it

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possible to find anything more perfect than every piece in Don Giovanni: Where else has music individualized and characterized so surely?” Tchaikovsky famously commented “Through that work I have come to know what music is”; Bruno Walter confessed, “I discovered beneath the playfulness a dramatist’s inexorable seriousness and wealth of characterization. I recognized in Mozart the Shakespeare of opera.” Shaw thought the fine workmanship he found in Don Giovanni “the most important part of my education.” Kierkegaard exclaimed: “Immortal Mozart, you to whom I owe it that I have not gone through life without being profoundly moved.” E.T.A. Hoffmann called Don Giovanni the “opera of all operas.”- that title unchallenged for two centuries.. At the beginning of Act II, Don Giovanni defends his life of exploitation and seduction to his servant, Leporello: “Don’t you know that they are more necessary to me than the bread I eat, the very air I breathe.” The essence of the entire opera concerns the tragedy of sexual obsession. Although he is evil, Don Giovanni is resolute in his aims and exploitations: he cannot resist indulgence, deception, or the sheer joy of deception for its own sake. For Giovanni, the thrill of the chase was the excitement of life itself. Like his fellow libertine, the Duke in Rigoletto, whose motto was “Questa o quella” (“This woman or that woman,” Giovanni’s motto was “quest’ e quella” (“This woman AND that woman.”) Don Giovanni provides that great combination of poignant sadness and emotional turmoil, together with moments of lusty charm, comedy, gaiety, excitement, and laughter. The essential tragedy in this story of the great seducer, owner of the famous catalog, is that he goes to eternal damnation for no more vicious or inexcusable a crime than the killing of an old man whom he tried his hardest to dissuade from fighting, and, in fact, killed in self-defense. Nevertheless, with all of the story’s allusions and moral fanfare, it does seem that another tragedy can be interpreted within the Mozart/Da Ponte Don Giovanni story: he was a recurrent failure in all of his seductions. Thus we experience the intrigue and the excitement of an opera that for two centuries has been considered an extraordinary work of genius, and possibly the most perfect opera ever written: “the opera of all operas.”