MOZARTâS DON GIOVANNI
A SHORT GUIDE TO A GREAT OPERA
The opera and its composer
Whoâs who and whatâs what
The interval: talking points
Act by act
THE OPERA AND ITS COMPOSER
Don Giovanni, which Charles Gounod, the French composer, called âthat unequalled and immortal masterpieceâ, was first produced in Prague on 29 October 1787, to tremendous acclaim. This was around four years before Mozart died, aged only 35.
Mozart had already been freelancing in Vienna for six years after being unceremoniously expelled from the household of his former employer the Archbishop of Salzburg with a kick on his arse, as he himself described it. (He was a difficult employee to manage.) His celebrity concert performances were no longer as popular, and he was increasingly dependent on opera and foreign touring for his income. He was living expensively: the fees for Don Giovanni covered less than his rent for a year and a half. And he was already borrowing money from friends. He had other preoccupations at this time, as well: his father Leopold had died unexpectedly in the previous May and there was a lot of correspondence necessary to wind up the estate: the auction of the assets took place the following September. However, Mozart seems to have taken this âin his strideâ, and some believe that his fatherâs death may have generated a creative urge.
The residents of Prague were enthusiastic about Mozart. As the conductor Bruno Walter has said, âthe enthusiasm of the Prague audiences âshed a ray of sunshineââ upon Mozartâs sorrowful life. Eighteen months before Don Giovanni, Prague had given The Marriage of Figaro such a welcome that, âfor the first time since his childhood, Mozart knew what real success and acclaim meant.â There, he was far better appreciated than in Vienna, where the reception accorded to Figaro had been lukewarm: audiences in Vienna regarded it as heavy and difficult, and it was quickly superseded by other operas such as MartĂn y Solerâs Una cosa rara, rarely heard today, but quoted in the supper scene in Don Giovanni.
As Figaro was such a success in Prague, in the early months of 1787 the theatre director there gave Mozart a commission for another opera. The directorâs wife would subsequently sing the part of Zerlina, the peasant girl chased by Giovanni.
The librettist of Figaro had been Lorenzo da Ponte, who was up to his eyes in work.1 He was working for twelve hours at a stretch, fortified by a bottle of tokay, a box of tobacco and frequent revival by his housekeeperâs sixteen-year-old daughter, who brought him coffee and much else. He also claimed that it was he who suggested to Mozart using the familiar old tale about Don Juan and âhellfire and seductionâ. Over the years, it had featured in a wide variety of theatre. The French and Venetian dramatists Molière and Goldoni had written plays using the story and Gluck had composed a very successful ballet-pantomine. Less reputably, it featured in Commedia dellâarte â pantomime-and-puppet shows at fairgrounds. The story had also been treated âad nauseamâ in other operas, and in the same year as Mozartâs, there were two other âDon Giovanniâ operas.2
Da Ponte based his libretto on one already written by Giovanni Bertati, (1735â1815) a poet whom he described uncomplimentarily as a âfrog blown up with windâ.
The high-minded Emperor Joseph, the autocratic and eccentric ruler of the vast Habsburg Empire, and a music enthusiast, would never have suggested such an old-fashioned and vulgar subject for his court theatre: it was a subject for popular theatres. Nor would his censors have tolerated sentiments like Viva la libertĂ , expressed by everyone at the climax of Act 1. But for Prague, which was relatively provincial and dowdy, it was safe: Dr Johnsonâs friend Hester Thrale thought that everything in Prague seemed to be at least five centuries behind. And Da Ponte seems to have successfully duped the censors, by omitting contentious material from the copy âfiledâ with them.
At the beginning of October, Mozart, with his wife Constanze, took the three-day journey from Vienna to Prague. He was joined there by his librettist a few days later. The overture and the finale were still incomplete. The première had to be delayed and then a singer was ill. So The Marriage of Figaro was put on again instead. Because the show was to have been graced by the Emperorâs sister, the Archduchess Maria Theresa, who was passing through on her honeymoon, the irreverent Figaro might have been thought unsuitable. However, she commanded it to be performed. According to one story, Mozart, fortified with punch, then completed the overture of Don Giovanni during the night before the première. It was ready by 7am. The ink was still wet on the copies from which the orchestra had to play, so the story goes.
Afterwards, the Prague management tried to persuade Mozart to stay and write another opera, but he was too busy and had to rush back to Vienna.
Six months later, Vienna gave Mozartâs opera a disappointing reception, as it had The Marriage of Figaro. Perhaps the subject was too threadbare (for a long time, the Italians also found Don Giovanni too difficult and refused to stage it). For that Vienna performance, Mozartâs first love, his wifeâs sister Aloysia, was the Donna Anna. Caterina Cavalieri, who was later the mistress of Mozartâs competitor Antonio Salieri, was the Donna Elvira.
The Mozart family was employed in the service of the highly influential Archbishop of Salzburg, the local potentate where Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born on 27 January 1756.
From the age of six, he spent much time away on tour. His father Leopold needed to extract, while it lasted, the most value out of his son and daughter Wolfgang and Nannerl, who were both infant prodigies. When Mozart was seven, the family went on a three-and-a-half year European tour to London. Between the ages of thirteen and seventeen, Wolfgang went on three tours to Italy.
As an adult, his father wanted him to get a permanent and secure position, which he never did. He went to Paris in fruitless search of a job, accompanied by his mother, who died there. Later, aged 25, he left Salzburg and fell out with the Archbishop. This did not provide a good basis for his ambition to work as a freelance in the capital of the Habsburg Empire, Vienna. There, the challenge was to distinguish oneself from the many other competing composers. At first, Mozart was successful in this precarious existence.
He married Constanze Weber, whose sister had earlier rejected him. With Constanze, he had two sons. It seems she was a liability: she was often away at a health spa, and Mozart was very worried by her tendency to flirt. He got into debt, fell ill, died and was buried in a common re-usable grave. The cause of his death, on 5 December 1791, is not known, and has been famously attributed to Salieri, not least in a play by Pushkin, an opera by Rimsky-Korsakov and in Peter Shafferâs drama Amadeus (1984). Mozart had worked himself to death: he spent almost a third of his 36-year life â 3,720 days â away from home. Yet the piled-up volumes of the âMozart Editionâ on display in Salzburg measure over six feet high. BACK
Giovanni is a fascinating figure. He would be âinexcusable in real lifeâ, but he is also a fantasy figure who many men would like to emulate and many women would like their man to be, as we sense in the famous and delightful duet with Zerlina, LĂ ci darem la mano.
The opera was staged by the great Manuel Garcia in New York in the 1825/26 season, and was attended there by Lorenzo da Ponte himself. Garciaâs daughter, the great diva Pauline Viardot subsequently bought the autograph score for around ÂŁ200. When she showed it to Rossini, he lowered his bulky frame to the floor and prostrated himself in deepest reverence before it.3 No wonder.
Don Giovanni was part of the staple repertoire of the Royal Italian Opera in London right through the middle of the nineteenth century. Even the flames which in mid-century reduced the Covent Garden theatre âto a shapeless mass of ruinsâ,4 did not prevent the Don popping back up in the following year in the Lyceum down the road. He was on stage in three London houses two years later.
WHOâS WHO AND WHATâS WHAT
The story below is based on the libretto. Certain directors may amend opera stories to suit their production.
The setting is a city somewhere in Spain. The attempted rape of Donna Anna by the nobleman Don Giovanni is interrupted by her father, the Commander (Commendatore).5 Don Giovanni kills him. Her rather âwetâ fiancĂŠ Don Ottavio swears revenge, and Annaâs thirst for revenge becomes one of the driving forces of the opera.
Also demanding satisfaction for Don Giovanniâs ear...