Don Giovanni

When an attempt at seduction ends in murder, libertine aristocrat Don Giovanni tries and fails to outrun his sins. While Mozart and Lorenzo Da Ponte’s first collaboration—Le nozze di Figaro (1786)—had received only moderate success at its Vienna premiere, in Prague it was an immediate triumph. A commission quickly followed for a new opera—one composed especially for a city with a long tradition of Don Juan-inspired works. The result was Don Giovanni (1787). Altogether darker than its predecessor, this was no traditional comic opera but a “drama giocoso”—a smiling drama whose comedy was anchored in human nature, unleashed not in the traditional four acts, but just two. The effect is fluid, with standalone arias and set-pieces dissolving into continuous musical sequences. The action unfolds at pace, unstoppable and inevitable from the first bars to the finale. Shakespearean in its emotional breadth, the opera combines humor with psychodrama, colliding the worlds of peasants Zerlina and Masetto and aristocrats Donna Anna and Don Ottavio. Mozart’s musical language evolved to express these extremes, challenging his audience with daring harmonic writing and rhythmic clashes. It’s a score of contrasts, from the brooding “Overture” and Donna Anna’s tempestuous “Or sai chi l’honore” to Don Ottavio’s “Dalla sua pace” and the Don’s ravishing “Serenade” to Leporello’s quick-tongued comic “Catalogue Aria.”