Overture (Andante — Molto allegro, D minor/D major) (1787)
Legend says Mozart wrote it the night before the premiere; its slow introduction returns as the statue's music
Recording: Josef Krips, Wiener Staatsoper · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
Opera · Italian opera
Don Giovanni
29 October 1787, Estates Theatre, Prague
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart · libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte
A dramma giocoso in two acts on the Don Juan legend. In the first minutes the seducer kills an old man defending his daughter's honour; in the last, the dead man's stone funeral monument walks into the dining room, takes the murderer's hand and drags him to hell. Between those two scenes lies a comedy of catalogues, disguises and peasant weddings, which is why Mozart and Da Ponte called it "jolly drama" rather than tragedy.
How to spot them
- ▸Seville; a rake, his grumbling servant, three wronged women and a statue that accepts a dinner invitation
- ▸Voices: the seducer (baritone), his servant (bass-baritone), Donna Anna and Donna Elvira (sopranos), Zerlina (soprano), Don Ottavio (tenor), the Commendatore (bass)
- ▸The servant's list of conquests: 640 in Italy, 231 in Germany, 100 in France, 91 in Turkey, and in Spain 1,003
- ▸Clue patterns: Da Ponte, Prague 1787, K. 527, trombones and D minor, the 'supper scene'
Arias & moments — listen
"Madamina, il catalogo è questo" (the Catalogue Aria) (1787)
A servant consoles an abandoned woman by reading out his master's tally of conquests
Recording: Josef Krips, Wiener Staatsoper · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
"Là ci darem la mano" (1787)
The seduction duet with a peasant bride on her wedding day; Chopin and Liszt both wrote variations on it
Recording: Josef Krips, Wiener Staatsoper · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
"Deh, vieni alla finestra" (the Serenade) (1787)
A canzonetta sung to a maid under a balcony, accompanied on stage by a mandolin
Recording: Josef Krips, Wiener Staatsoper · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
"Il mio tesoro intanto" (1787)
Don Ottavio's aria of consolation and revenge, notorious for a phrase that must be sung in one breath
Recording: Josef Krips, Wiener Staatsoper · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
The supper scene: the stone guest arrives (Act II finale) (1787)
Trombones, a stone handshake and a refusal to repent; the stage band has just played 'Non più andrai'
Recording: Josef Krips, Wiener Staatsoper · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
"Or sai chi l'onore" (1787)
Donna Anna names her father's killer and demands vengeance
Quick-fire facts
- •Music by Mozart (K. 527), libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte, in Italian; its full title is Il dissoluto punito, ossia Il Don Giovanni.
- •It premiered at the Estates Theatre (Nostitz Theatre) in Prague on 29 October 1787, with Mozart conducting.
- •Mozart and Da Ponte labelled it a dramma giocoso, not a tragedy.
- •Da Ponte drew on the Don Juan tradition going back to Tirso de Molina's El burlador de Sevilla, and on Giovanni Bertati's libretto for Gazzaniga set earlier the same year.
- •Leporello's catalogue totals 2,065 women, with 'mille e tre' — a thousand and three — in Spain alone.
- •For the Vienna premiere in 1788 Mozart added Don Ottavio's 'Dalla sua pace' and Elvira's 'Mi tradì quell'alma ingrata', and cut 'Il mio tesoro'.
- •The trombones that accompany the Commendatore's statue are otherwise silent all evening — Mozart reserved them for the supernatural.
- •The Vienna version ended with the Don's descent into hell; the closing sextet, in which the survivors point the moral, was long cut and is now usually restored.
- •The Estates Theatre still stands and was used by Miloš Forman to film the opera scenes in Amadeus (1984).
Drill it — 8 cards
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Sources
- Grove Music Online (Oxford Music Online) — Don Giovanni Premiere, the 1788 Vienna revisions and the dramma giocoso designation
- Gustav Kobbé, rev. the Earl of Harewood and Antony Peattie — The New Kobbé's Opera Book Synopsis and the numbering of the arias