A devilishly dark work that is bound to seduce you
Don Giovanni (Mozart, 1787)
Centred on an amoral character who is neither hero nor villain and weaving elements of high tragedy into low farce, this is an opera that defies easy categorisation and one that is hard to stage successfully. Dramatically, it may not quite add up, but Mozart’s music is so inexhaustibly inventive and expressive that it exerts an endless fascination and sustains great popularity.
Plot
Don Giovanni, inveterate aristocratic seducer of thousands of women, attempts to rape Donna Anna. In the ensuing fracas, Giovanni fights and kills Anna’s father, the Commendatore. Giovanni and his exploited but venal servant Leporello then fend off the advances of Donna Elvira, who still loves Giovanni despite his treachery. Giovanni next sets his sights on a peasant girl Zerlina, who is about to marry Masetto.
Anna and her fiancé Don Ottavio join forces with Elvira, Zerlina and Masetto in a plan to exact their own rough justice, but Giovanni cunningly eludes them, until he and Leporello take shelter in a cemetery, where a voice emanating from a statue of the murdered Commendatore solemnly foretells his doom. Giovanni mockingly invites the statue to dinner. The statue magically arrives at Giovanni’s mansion and drags a defiant Giovanni down to the flames of hell. The remaining characters assemble to point the moral that sinners will be punished.
Background
Mozart was 30 when he composed
Don Giovanni, under the shadow of the sudden death of his beloved but domineering father. The opera was commissioned to celebrate a royal wedding by the court theatre in Prague, and despite some last-minute panic and alterations, it scored an instant triumph. It was revised for performances in Vienna the following year, leaving posterity with alternative versions of the score, sometimes mixed and matched.
The libretto is the work of Lorenzo da Ponte, who had collaborated with Mozart on Le Nozze di Figaro (and later, Così fan tutte). The basis of the plot was an old story dating back at least 200 years that existed in many versions all over Europe, in street puppet plays and commedia dell’arte farces as well as Molière’s rather more sophisticated treatment. But much of the intrigue in the middle of the opera is original to da Ponte.
Commentary
From the arrestingly solemn opening bars of the overture, with its ascending chromatic scales, and the restless presto that follows, this is Mozart’s darkest and most tonally varied opera. The opening scene and the finales to both acts are showpieces for Mozart’s genius for large-scale dramatic construction; two exquisite trios, Protegga il giusto cielo and Ah
taci, ingiusto core, demonstrate his matchless mastery of writing for ensemble; and each of the principal characters has at least one marvellous aria to sing. The most popular numbers are Leporello’s Catalogue song, in which he lists Giovanni’s international conquests, and the duet
Là ci darem la mano in which Giovanni softens up the susceptible Zerlina.
But it’s an opera that poses great challenges for two singers in particular. The baritone (or bassbaritone) who takes the title role has two short contrasting arias, a charming serenade accompanied by tinkling mandolin, and a fearsome drinking song that tests precision at high speed. Donna Anna has some of the most difficult music Mozart ever wrote for soprano.
The short straw is drawn by the tenor singing Don Ottavio. For Prague, Mozart wrote him the gently lilting Il mio tesoro; in Vienna, this was excised and replaced with the slower (and technically harder) Dalla
sua pace. Nowadays it is common to include both arias in performance, but although the music is so beautiful, it is oddly impossible to make the polite, passive character either likeable or vivid. In the 19th century, a Romantic view was taken of Giovanni as a Byronic figure pitting himself against the forces of bourgeois and religious convention; today, the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction – towards the idea that he is merely a compulsive if not psychotic rapist.
Recordings
A recording made in 1960 (EMI) still holds pride of place in any catalogue. Conducted with elegance by Carlo Maria Giulini, it features the dashing Viennese baritone Eberhard Wächter in the title role, and Joan Sutherland and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, both in glorious voice as Anna and Elvira. Those who yearn for something more stringently “authentic” in terms of period instruments and musical practice can choose between highly energised performances conducted by John Eliot Gardiner (Archiv) and the eccentrically but intriguingly different René Jacobs (Harmonia Mundi).
Modern productions tend to go into overdrive when confronted with the sexual politics implicit in the opera and most of them end up making a terrible mess of it. Perhaps the most straightforwardly enjoyable version on DVD is Joseph Losey’s cinema version, starring Ruggero Raimondi and Kiri Te Kanawa (Concorde).
Mozart’s music is so inventive that it exerts an endless fascination