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

Page 2

Principal Characters in the Opera

Page 2

Story Narrative with Music Highlights

Page 3

Mozart and Don Giovanni

Page 12

Opera Journeys Mini Guide Series

Published ©Copywritten by Opera Journeys

www.operajourneys.com

Don Giovanni Page 1

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 17

th

Century

Don Giovanni Page 2

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!”

Don Giovanni Page 5

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.

Don Giovanni Page6

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

Don Giovanni Page 7

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”

Don Giovanni Page 8

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”

Don Giovanni Page 9

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

Don Giovanni Page10

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

W

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,

Don Giovanni Page12

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.”

M

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

Don Giovanni Page13

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).

D

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,

Don Giovanni Page14

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.

M

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

Don Giovanni Page16

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.

Don Giovanni Page17

The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Così

fan tutte, were composed during the late eighteenth
century social and political upheavals. This Da Ponte-
Mozart 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.

T

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.

Don Giovanni Page18

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.

G

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

Don Giovanni Page19

(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

Don Giovanni Page 20

were from their very beginnings extremely popular
medieval morality plays. Certainly, during the God-
centered 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

Don Giovanni Page 21

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

Don Giovanni Page 22

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, boudoir-

hopping, 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;

Don Giovanni Page 23

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.

D

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

Don Giovanni Page 24

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:

Don Giovanni Page 25

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

Don Giovanni Page 26

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 well-

meaning: 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.

Don Giovanni Page 27

“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

Don Giovanni Page 28

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.

T

he banquet scene of Don Giovanni is a great tour-

de-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.

I

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

Don Giovanni Page 31

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.”

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