Two Themes from Don Giovanni (from the opera Don Juan)

Newsletter Signup

---

Giovanni has a plan: Leporello is to pretend to be him and entice Elvira away, leaving Giovanni, dressed as Leporello, free to seduce her maid, Zerlina. A false scare sends the pair running off. The disguised Giovanni tricks Masetto into handing over his weapons and then thrashes him and runs off, leaving Masetto groaning on the ground. Just as he finds the door, Ottavio and Anna enter, followed by Zerlina and Masetto. Thinking Leporello is Giovanni, they corner him while Elvira begs them to spare him. Desperate, he reveals his true identity, to the astonishment of all.

As they advance on him, he begs for mercy but manages to flee. Giovanni laughingly relates his recent adventures to Leporello. Suddenly, a ghostly voice says that his mirth will soon end. Leporello, stuttering with fright, notices the funerary statue of the Commandant, on which is inscribed a vow of vengeance on his murderer. Giovanni brazenly orders the terrified Leporello to invite the statue to supper. The statue accepts, with a horrifying nod of its head. Giovanni orders the orchestra to play as he dines, while Leporello sneaks food from the table. Elvira bursts in and begs Giovanni to change his ways, but he merely invites her to eat.

As she is leaving, she suddenly stops at the door, screams, and runs out another door. Giovanni orders Leporello to investigate the commotion. He does so and returns stammering about a man of stone knocking at the door. Giovanni offers his hospitality as Leporello hides. The statue refuses mortal food but invites Giovanni to sup with him. The statue demands that Giovanni repent, but the rake refuses. Terrified, Giovanni tries to escape but is blocked by the fire. With a cry of despair, Giovanni is dragged off to hell as a chorus of demons condemns him to eternal damnation.

Flames envelop the castle. Leporello, who has escaped the inferno, relays the news and describes the terror he has witnessed. Justice has been done, they all agree. Anna agrees to marry Ottavio; Elvira will retire to a convent; Zerlina and Masetto will go home to eat; and Leporello will seek a new and better master. They turn to the audience and warn that a similar fate awaits all such libertines. We welcome suggested improvements to any of our articles.

You can make it easier for us to review and, hopefully, publish your contribution by keeping a few points in mind. Your contribution may be further edited by our staff, and its publication is subject to our final approval. Unfortunately, our editorial approach may not be able to accommodate all contributions.

Our editors will review what you've submitted, and if it meets our criteria, we'll add it to the article. Please note that our editors may make some formatting changes or correct spelling or grammatical errors, and may also contact you if any clarifications are needed. Another objection is that Don Giovanni is dishonest, that he makes false promises of marriage. It is possible to construct a defense of the Don on this score. Exaggeration and flattery are expected in courtship. If a man says, "If you leave me I will die," it doesn't mean that you should rush out to buy life insurance on him before you dump him.

This defense works well in an 18th-century setting, where flowery language was the expected norm.

Even Don Ottavio uses exaggerated language, addressing Donna Anna as "my life. At the end of the day, the Don fails on this score. We must also consider the Don's sexual pathology. It is unfair and unproductive to psychologize about the Don. Still less does Giovanni have to be pursued, as if by another Elvira, with every interpretation that has been given of Don Juanism as a psychological category: Still, we can't look away from the fact that the Don is missing out completely on the kind of intimacy and connection that is the greatest gift of sexuality.

The opera shows Don Giovanni as distant and disconnected. Over the years, much has been made of the fact that of all the major characters in the opera, only Don Giovanni has no self-reflective aria. The implicit message is that he does not feel deeply. Critics moralize that Don Giovanni does not go to Hell—he is in Hell. This strikes me as pushing the point too far. In part, the Don is a simple archetype of desire and the life force. We can enjoy him for his joy of living and his love of the appetitive in life.

And yet, there are moments in the opera when we can feel a touch of sadness and even loneliness in the Don. What does the music tell us about the question of whether the Don is a hero or a villain? To begin with, it is obvious that Mozart wants us to like and enjoy the Don. He is shown as strong, confident, happy, free of superstition, and his own man.

He is unapologetic about his love of life and women. He is who he is. And of course, the Don gets great music. Mozart provides Don Giovanni with an aria that explicitly embraces his philosophy of enjoying life: I must say, however, that I find in this music a hint of sadness. There is a sense of "he doth protest too much" that leaves open thoughts of Don Giovanni's psychological challenges and his distance from human contact.

I do not know whether Mozart intended this response, but I have a slight impulse to squirm with discomfort at this point in the opera. To me, the music that best defines the Don is the opening bars of the finale. The Don is going to finish off his rather eventful day with a nice dinner. The point of dinner is enjoyment. Here we see the Don as the archetype of the life force and the embodiment of the appetitive in life. The music is swelling, sprightly, and supremely joyous.

Everything you always wanted to know about… Mozart's Don Giovanni

Mozart also tells us who Don Giovanni is by telling us who he is not, that is, by providing foils or what philosophical types would call "contrast objects. For the opera's opening aria, in which Leporello complains about his boss, Mozart provides music that almost stomps along, conveying lower-class crudeness and capturing the feelings of resentment expressed in the written text. Later in the opera, Mozart heightens our perception of Don Giovanni's courage by showing Leporello as cowardly.

The music given Leporello in the finale when the statue arrives for dinner is quick, insistent, reactive, and seemingly uncontrolled, suggesting fear so strong that Leporello can't get a grip on himself. The second contrast object is Don Ottavio, Donna Anna's wimpy boyfriend, who is cautious, conventional, boring, and at the same time eager to exploit her distress.

Above all, we readily imagine that Don Ottavio would be hopeless in bed.

Mozart's Don Giovanni: An Enlightenment Hero?

These contrasts are quite clear in the music. Once when I was watching a performance, at several points I found myself checking my watch, thinking about what I was going to do the next day and generally being bored.

Then it struck me: Mozart designed it this way. You are supposed to be bored.

To place this discussion in historic context: Mozart wrote at the time of the Enlightenment ferment. The opera premiered in This was eleven years after the American Revolution and two years before the French Revolution. As depicted and rather exaggerated in the film Amadeus , Mozart was a bit of a hell-raiser, who had a very active "teenage self.

Some commentators conjecture that Figaro so angered Mozart's patrons at Vienna that he was forced to produce his next opera, Don Giovanni , in Prague, a town that long held a reputation of encouraging the rebellious spirit. Thus, Mozart was very much a man of his time, reflecting in his art the controversies of his day and standing on the side of the new Enlightenment ideals of reason and the individual and against rank, convention, superstition, and church.

Reading contemporary accounts, it almost seems universal. Enlightenment thinking—with its rejection of rigid church strictures, celebration of the natural, and rejection of the mind-body dichotomy—was used by libertines throughout Europe, a sort of Playboy Philosophy of its day. Additionally, at this time Linnaeus introduced the biological classification system, and people started thinking, "Let's see: Think of Mozart's time as the s in America mixed with a dash of Margaret Mead. Is Don Giovanni a hero? His behavior is so flawed by narcissism, irresponsibility, and dishonesty that he simply fails to qualify.

If the opera were principally about the political and social issues of the time, as I first perceived it, then we could designate the Don a hero. It is, however, principally about human relationships, and on this score the Don fails. He has many admirable traits, but he also does evil: He lies, he injures others, he evades responsibility, and he does so remorselessly. In short, I got it wrong.

My initial response to the work was in error. But it was an interesting error. Of course, the elements to which I responded were there—the text supporting liberty and attacking the church, the celebration of life and of the appetitive. The other elements were there as well—the Don's dishonesty, narcissism, and irresponsibility.

My error was not letting in the richness of the work. Don Giovanni is a morally ambivalent figure. Even at the political level he is ambivalent—representing Enlightenment ideals but at the same time embarrassing us with irresponsible behavior, rather like the druggie caucus of the Libertarian Party that believes in freedom defined as the freedom to not experience the consequences of one's behavior.

He clarified this verbally in the score. He bade the second variation skip along at the quickest possible tempo. It has the character of music defined as moto perpetuo , in regular, constant motion. Chopin gave the third variation to the solo piano.

It became an etude, in which an echo of the theme presented in the right hand is heard against the incessant motion of the left. Chopin wrote the fourth variation twice, as he was not satisfied with his original idea. On the manuscript, he deleted the precisely written page and added the new version on the blank pages at the end. He instructed this variation to be played con bravura.

A masterpiece completed in a hurry

It gives the impression of a piece written not for piano but for violin. Despite this, that variation is wholly surprising. So much has been written about this adagio that it would suffice for a small anthology.

The first voice would be that of Schumann, who wrote: It is both mischievous and suitable that […] the B flat major, in all its fullness, should accurately designate the first kiss of love. She played them with great success in many of her concerts. He explains that it is some fantastical tableau.

• To Make a World Safe for Revolution: Cubas Foreign Policy (Center for International Affairs)
• KDPPS-1
• Pfarrerinnen und Pfarrer der evangelisch-reformierten Landeskirche beider Appenzell (German Edition)
• Outlines of psychology: an elementary treatise, with some practical applications
• The Carroll Girls