The other day I saw a dress rehearsal for Opera Theatre of St. Louis' production of Don Giovanni, music by W.A. Mozart, libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte. This is my fifth favorite opera (after another Mozart, The Magic Flute, Verdi's Falstaff, Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg, and Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier), and of the five, the first I was able to see live. I was not disappointed. The Opera Theatre usually hires younger singers who are on the verge of a major career, so audiences get the double fortune of youthful, fresh voices that are also well-trained and have some experience. I can't think of a single miscast. The man in the title role had, for my taste, a little too much swagger in his voice at times (by which I primarily mean scooping), but that is my main concern, and he otherwise very much looked the part (in fact, the best look I've seen); Leporello was perhaps the best cast, a reminder of Leporello's comic nature. The production, however, had the unfortunate dashes of Eurotrash, which I was surprised to see in this part of the world. Perhaps the directors (one of whom I know as an acquaintance from working together in Opera Studio) thought the supernatural aspects in the 2nd act gave them license to play with the opera all-around, but it came of as campy. My eyes rolled dangerously when, after Don Giovanni murders the Commendatore, three ghostly figures walk out, one of them carrying a timepiece. One of my viewing companions, Dr. Carter, said during intermission that he viewed these and the other figures that appeared occasionally as symbols of the decay of the libertine lifestyle the Don would eventually face. That seems likely, but also insulting. Symbols are meant to reveal deeper aspects of things that otherwise would not be seen; people don't need decaying spectres to tell them that such a way of life does not end well. It came off as hokey. The conductor was Jane Glover, who wrote a wonderful biography of sorts on Mozart called Mozart's Women, and does the great job of avoiding feminism while still giving due respect to the females in the composer's life.
The Don Juan legend vies with the Wandering Jew legend as one of the most vital European legends to affect Western Civilization. I recall reading that one supposed origin is from a Spanish nobleman, who, wanting to conceal his rampant homosexuality, spread rumors of his straight conquests. Essentially, the legend concerns a libertine who gets his due, usually by going to Hell. The three greatest literary works inspired by the figure are Moliere's play Dom Juan, Byron's poem Don Juan (pronounced joo-en), and Kierkegaard's Either/Or. In music, it inspired Richard Strauss to write a tone poem. Then there's the opera Don Giovanni, which is perhaps the most influential version of them all.
As it does with most other artists contending with it, the Don Juan legend seemed to cause many equivocal feelings in Mozart and da Ponte (da Ponte had been something of libertine, and was friends with Casanova, who was in the audience at the premiere of Don Giovanni). The opera defies classification. It is officially considered a "dramma giocoso," a catch-all term for anything that mixed the comical and serious; Mozart entered it as "opera buffa," which seems odd if one thinks only of the more harrowing moments of the work. It is probably the prime exemplar of Mozart's gift of combining various styles and elements into a unified and cohesive whole. In Leporello and the peasants, you have the elements of opera buffa; in the nobles, you have opera seria; Don Giovanni is able to go between the two. However, he seems to falter at the newer presence in opera, the supernatural, a beckoning of Romanticism that was fast approaching; the Don courageously, if foolishly and hubristically, tries to defy his the Statue and his fate, that which he himself set up to occur, but is dragged to Hell for his defiance. Seeing it again, I realize how much a check Don Giovanni is against my sensibilities of liberty, much like Ecclesiastes is against my romantic ones. In the first act finale (one of the glories of opera, and music in general), Giovanni leads the peasants in a salute to liberty ("Viva la libertá!"), which inspired the most equivocal feelings I have had in seeing this work. (One interesting criticism of the opera concerns Mozart's increasingly negative view of the Enlightenment, and, since many modern ideas concerning the nature of liberty spring from this period, it would be interesting to explore this.) He both means and doesn't mean what he says (I'll leave you to figure that out). As a libertine, he shows the depths to which one can take liberty. I will never reject freedom, but I do recognize full on the depravity it invites. But that is more the fault of human character and action.
Which brings me to Don Giovanni himself. What kind of character is he? Some compare him to Hamlet, in that he seems to invite as many interpretations as there are people, which I suppose could be the case, but as there are higher orders of infinity in mathematics, so too here, and Hamlet is at least one order removed from Giovanni. I find the Don to be one of the largest cases of inherent emptiness made explicit. He is little more than appetite, which this recent production really brought out. One wonders how he has time for anything else, if he has bedded some 1800 women; the noble are not invincible to debt, and the Don seems to have plenty of money on hand, though perhaps such questions are irrelevant, or not, if we are to concern ourselves with liberty. The wedding party he hosts in the first act finale is supremely decadent (some go so far as an orgy). At his last supper, he begrudgingly allows Leporello to have some morsels of food, hording the rest to himself. Opera Theatre's production has a wall full of pictures of his conquests right to next to Giovanni as he dines, an addition I quite like, for, in addition with the next thing I will list, it seems that, before his damnation, he is surrounded by that which satiates him. One more thing which pleases his appetite, it is unfortunate to notice, is music. He eats as three different selections of music are played (one of which is one of Mozart's most famous tunes, "Non piú andrai" from The Marriage of Figaro), cycling through them as quickly as he does women (I am reminded of something G.K. Chesterton said, that dining with music is an insult to both the cook and the violinist). I bring this up because I am bothered at the moment by a troublesome question: is music divine, or is it human? In other words, is music truly worthy of God, or is it a delightful construct of man? The Psalms presume to praise God through music, but is it a good medium or a diversion? I'll leave this to another time, but it is important here because music is, no matter what, a sensuous experience, and the Don knows nothing deeper than sensuality. So, again, what type of character is the Don? He is not Shakespearean, for I do not think he has an inwardness, or a lack of inwardness that matters. More importantly, he does not change, which Shakespeare's great personages do. This is important, at least concerning his damnation. Dante's characters necessarily experience no change, as Harold Bloom says: they have received their judgment, and, I think, so has Don Giovanni. All the pleas for renunciation from Donna Elvira, and the demands of the Statue, are useless. The great moment in the first act finale when Zerlina leads the charge in telling Don Giovanni he's done for is perhaps a redundancy, as that was the case when we first see him. I think that is part of the foregrounding involved. Sometime before the events of the opera occur, the Don had already become a lost cause; the murder of the Commendatore only hastens his demise.
Mind you, most of the thoughts are inspired more by the music than the words, admirable libretto though it is. It is widely accepted that Mozart's genius lay in opera, that his true gifts sing through his characters. There will have to be another post to consider the music, for there is simply too much to explore here and now. Only Verdi, and to a smaller extent Puccini, consistently manifested such humanistic music that breathed life and character into the people on the page. Wagner achieved this in Die Meistersinger, but his other operas are too much in the realm of myth and gods to be human. Strauss did so in Der Rosenkavalier, but there is something else in his other works. Mozart remains the paragon of shaping humans with music.
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