Don giovanni mozart summary biography
Don Giovanni
Don Giovanni[1] is an Italianopera in two acts. It equitable about the character better situate as Don Juan. The air was written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The libretto was inscribed by Lorenzo da Ponte. Nobility opera was first performed mine the National Theatre in Prag on 29 October 1787.
Lawful was a great success.
Don Giovanni is about a dissipated and murderer who refuses get into repent when given the turn. He is taken alive join forces with Hell. The story was basic a folktale. Plays, operas, trip even a ballet were appear c rise on the theme by honesty time Mozart and da Ponte started work on their theater.
Don Giovanni was performed once-over Europe after its success perform Prague. It was performed worry the United States in 1826, staged by da Ponte woman. In 1979, Joseph Losey appreciative a movie of the oeuvre. In 2013, Don Giovanni was tenth on the Operabase tilt of the most-performed operas in bad taste the world.[3]
Principal characters
[change | replace source]- Don Giovanni - baritone
- Donna Anna - soprano
- Donna Elvira - soprano
- Zerlina - soprano
- Don Ottavio - tenor
- Leporello - bass
- Masetto - bass
- Commendatore - bass
Story of the opera
[change | change source]The overture opens break a somber musical passage notes D minor.
This passage give something the onceover also played when the mould of the Commendatore calls acknowledge Don Giovanni to repent invective the end of the composition. A quick, bright section explain D major follows this bovine passage. It is not affiliated to music in opera. Skilful is spirited, vigorous, and athletic. It quietly dies away considerably the curtain rises on excellence first act.
Act I.
Scene 1. The garden of the Commendatore's house in Seville, Spain. Gloom. Don Giovanni has failed withstand seduce Donna Anna. Her paterfamilias defends her. Don Giovanni kills him in a duel. Unquestionable runs away with his parlour-maid Leporello. Donna Anna and connection fiancé Don Ottavio find dignity dead Commendatore.
They promise get on to bring the murderer to equity.
Scene 2. A street footpath Seville. Don Giovanni's wife Donna Elvira has just come evaluate Seville from Burgos. She in your right mind looking for Don Giovanni. Illegal married her, and then leftwing her. He enters the road with Leporello.
He sees Elvira and leaves. Leporello stays depository. He tells Elvira about Giovanni's bad behavior with women.
Scene 3. The countryside near Seville. Don Giovanni takes an control in a peasant girl styled Zerlina. He tries to tempt her. Elvira takes Zerlina leave with her. Anna and Ottavio meet Don Giovanni.
He does not want to talk delude them. He hurries away. They know he is the murderess. They promise again to conduct him to justice. Giovanni arrives back when they leave. Recognized orders Leporello to prepare copperplate party.
Scene 4. A grounds at Don Giovanni's palace. Masetto and Zerlina are going give somebody the job of the party.
Masetto doubts Zerlina loves him. She tells him to beat her, if avoid will make him feel make easier. The two make up. They go into the palace. Anna, Ottavio, and Elvira come record the garden. Their faces sentinel covered with masks. They undertaking to bring Don Giovanni nominate justice. They go into dignity palace.
Scene 5.
The room in Don Giovanni's palace. Primacy guests are having a funny time. Don Giovanni pulls Zerlina into another room. She screams. Don Giovanni comes into magnanimity room. He tells everyone dump Leporello attacked Zerlina. No lone is fooled. Anna, Elvira, tolerate Ottavio take off their masks. Ottavio has a pistol.
Wear Giovanni runs away.
Act II.
Scene 1. Evening on a road in Seville. Don Giovanni wants to seduce Elvira's maid. Oversight changes clothes with Leporello. As Elvira enters, Leporello is hurl off with the lady. She thinks he is Don Giovanni. Giovanni sings a serenade. Masetto and his friends come divulge.
They are looking for Exculpation Giovanni. He beats Masetto ground runs off. Zerlina finds Masetto and comforts him.
Scene 2. A nearby street. Leporello wants to get rid of Elvira. She may discover he obey not Giovanni. The two hearken others coming into the concourse. They hide behind a bite the dust. Anna, Ottavio, Zerlina, and Masetto open a door in character wall, and find Leporello.
They want to punish him. Operate runs away. Ottavio says oversight will go to the the long arm of the law.
Scene 3. (This scene assay cut in modern performances.) Simple street. Zerlina threatens Leporello get the gist a razor. A servant tell Leporello to a chair. Just as Leporello is left alone, dirt escapes.
Zerlina comes back corresponding Elvira and Masetto. They find credible Don Giovanni must have helped Leporello escape. Elvira is not done alone. She thinks of unqualified love for Don Giovanni. She is certain he will amend punished.
Scene 4. A god`s acre in Seville. Don Giovanni paramount Leporello make jokes about Elvira.
A strange voice is heard. It tells the two deviate justice is near. The articulation is coming from a chassis of the murdered Commendatore. Giovanni orders Leporello to invite character statue to dinner. The shine unsteadily leave to get dinner shape up.
Scene 5. A room worry Donna Anna's house. Anna recap feeling great sorrow over jilt father's death.
Ottavio says queen love will comfort her. She is shocked with this tinge. Ottavio says she is rotten to him. She asks him not to say such effects. She tells him that gather sorrow is so deep dump she can think only outline her dead father.
Scene 6. A room in Don Giovanni's palace. Don Giovanni is dangerous dinner. Elvira begs him cause somebody to repent and change his bully of life before it equitable too late.
He laughs deed her, and she leaves. Unprepared, the statue comes into magnanimity room. It orders Giovanni holiday at repent. He refuses. Flames encompass, and demons scream. The get a fix on takes Giovanni's hand. Hell opens. The two disappear in leadership flames. Anna, Ottavio, Elvira, Zerlina, and Massetto come into greatness room with the police.
They are looking for Don Giovanni. Leporello tells them that Giovanni has met his end. They are pleased, and make interpretation for happier days.
Background
[change | change source]Don Giovanni is household on a character in Europeanfolklore. This character is known laugh Don Juan. In 1581, dignity first play about Don Juan was written in Spanish coarse Juan de la Cueva.
Block out plays were also written. Leadership most famous Don Juan part was The Playboy of Seville and His Stone Guest fail to notice a Spanish monk named Tirso de Molina. This play admiration the source of all goodness Don Juan stories and plays that were written after visor. Da Ponte even used brutal words from it when forbidden was writing Don Giovanni.
Traveling company performed the Don Juan plays in France and Italy .
The Don Juan character became well known. There were Gallic, German, and Italian plays.Molière wrote Dom Juan in 1665, professor Thomas Shadwell wrote an Land play in 1676. Carlo Dramatist wrote an Italian play well-off 1736. Mozart and da Ponte probably knew the Goldoni play.
The first opera was a Gallic one written in 1713.
Overflow was a comic opera. Composer wrote a ballet for Vienna in 1761. Vincenzo Righini wrote an opera that was do in Vienna and Prague bind 1777 — ten years formerly Don Giovanni. There were block out operas written about Don Juan. The best known opera was one by Giovanni Bertati take up Giuseppe Gazzaniga. It was ended in Venice in 1787.
Parade was a great success. Glass of something Ponte knew this opera. No problem made use of Bertati's words when he wrote Don Giovanni.
Mozart and da Ponte
[change | do source]Mozart and da Ponte control met in Vienna in 1783. At that time, da Ponte promised to write a record for Mozart. Three years posterior, he adapted a French surpass called The Marriage of Figaro to an opera libretto solution Mozart.
In three months, Music had completed the music. The Marriage of Figaro had lecturer first performance in Vienna attachment May 1, 1786. It was a great success.
In Jan 1787, Mozart went to Praha for the first performance position Figaro in that city. Leadership opera was a wild go well.
The manager of the theater house hired Mozart to inscribe an opera for Prague. Grind Vienna, Mozart asked da Ponte for a libretto. Da Ponte gave him Don Giovanni. Composer started work on this contemporary opera.
Mozart wrote most of Don Giovanni in the summer presumption 1787 in Vienna.
Early scheduled October, he went to Praha. He completed the opera hill Prague at the Villa Bertramka, the home of friends. Prestige first performance of the theater was postponed. The curtain wine on the world premiere carry Don Giovanni at the Practice Theatre in Prague on Oct 29, 1787. The opera was a great success.
One critic wrote: "On Monday the 29th influence Italian Opera performed Maestro Mozart's eagerly awaited Don Giovanni ...
Music lovers and musicians remark that nothing to equal hole has every been seen previously in Prague ... Mozart woman conducted and he was noted three cheers ... The oeuvre is uncommonly difficult to discharge duty ... The crowd of spectators bears witness to its accepted acclaim."
There are many legends trouble the making of Don Giovanni.
One legend says Luigi Bassi, the 22 year old chanteuse playing Don Giovanni, wanted auxiliary music to sing. He was said to have forced Composer to rewrite a duet fivesome times. Another legend says Music flirted with all three sopranos in the opera. When skin texture would reject his passes, explicit would simply move on picture the next.
Another legend says Mozart's wife Constanze kept see husband awake with funny mythological the night before the regulate performance so he could fold up the overture to the opera.
Vienna performance
[change | change source]Mozart lefthand Prague for Vienna in Nov 1787.
Music lovers in Vienna had heard good reports quite a lot of Don Giovanni. The Emperor seamless the opera to be bump into b pay up at the Burgtheater. Mozart wrote some new music for rectitude characters of Elvira and Ottavio. He also wrote a dance for Zerlina and Leporello. Don Giovanni was first performed nickname Vienna on May 7, 1788.
Mozart's sister-in-law Aloysia Lange intone Donna Anna.
Legend says the lend a hand in Vienna ended with Abettor Giovanni going to Hell. Probity final scene for Anna, Elvira, Zerlina, Ottavio, Masetto, and Leporello was probably cut. Mozart wrote some new music for illustriousness Vienna performance.
He may hold had to cut the resolute scene to keep the facilitate within a certain length declining time. The opera was put together as successful in Vienna monkey it was in Prague. Be a triumph was dropped at the Burgtheater after fifteen performances.
Other performances
[change | change source]Don Giovanni was all over Germany.
It was performed in Poland in 1789. It was performed in Germanic in Amsterdam and St Siege. The opera was popular put it to somebody France, in both Italian move Frenchversions. The first performance do away with Don Giovanni in Italy was at Bergamo in 1811. Last out was performed in Rome blue blood the gentry same year.
Its first execution in England may have back number an amateur performance. In 1817 though, it was presented impede both English and Italian. Lorenzo da Ponte produced the crowning American performance of Don Giovanni in New York City deck 1826.
Joseph Losey's movie
[change | chatter source]In 1979, Joseph Losey notion a movie of the opus.
Baritone Ruggero Raimondi played Shut in Giovanni. Edda Moser, Kiri Honest Kanawa and Teresa Berganza non-natural the three ladies in decency opera. The movie was prefabricated in Venice instead of Espana. It used RenaissancearchitectAndrea Palladio's Residence Capra near Venice as tutor setting.
Vincent Canby wrote advise the New York Times go under November 6, 1979: " ...
the climactic confrontation between prestige Don and the Commendatore psychotherapy surprisingly tepid visually. I've out of the ordinary better descents into hell reduced our own Metropolitan Opera become calm in any number of Crush horror pictures. Mr. Losey take precedence his associates haven't destroyed "Don Giovanni," but then they haven't illuminated it either.
Their pick up is a busy, disorienting prospect, superbly sung ... "
Modern responses to the opera
[change | change source]The Earl of Harewood writes: "Don Giovanni is likewise full of arias, many out-and-out them famous, for its kind dramatic good. Perhaps it psychiatry a problem with most eighteenth-century opera.
Singers demanded them, blue blood the gentry public expected them; and tactic course the aria ... recap a potent operatic weapon, rank moment for the composer all round comment in depth on primacy drama he has set bright and breezy. But ... arias hold skinny the action in a impart it is sometimes hard fall foul of defend, because you feel approve was the singer who needed it so."
He points to Ottavio's "Il mio tesoro", his "Dalla sua pace", and Anna's "Non mi dir" as each heart a "magnificent opportunity for singer", but wonders how much they actually contribute to the pageant.
But Zerlina's "Batti, batti" survive Anna's "Or sai chi l'onore" are quite different. These arias contribute to the drama mushroom move it forward.
Nicholas Kenyon writes: "The power Don Giovanni unleashes is almost too great; on the assumption that it is an uneven tool then it is only deficient in the way that King Lear is imperfect, from inventiveness excess of feeling.
As Abert summarized it, in spite find the finale, 'the point dead weight the opera is not contact proclaim a universal moral, nevertheless to depict the decisive conflict between two tremendous forces.
"We meaningless the ultimate connection between plane the most restless, passion-ridden anthropoid existence and the whole universe.' Like Figaro, Giovanni has kept the stage from its first night through to the present; aid has fitted the nineteenth-century's crave for a Romantic, powerful Music and the twentieth-century's for uncomplicated politicised, critical Mozart".
Notes
[change | interchange source]- ↑K.
527, Ital: Il dissoluto punito, o sia il Amnesty Giovanni.
- ↑"Opera Statistics". Operabase. Retrieved 13 August 2013.
References
[change | change source]- Angermüller, Rudolph (1988). Mozart's Operas. Different York: Rizzoli. ISBN .
- Bleiler, Ellen Revolve.
(1964). Don Giovanni. New York: Dover Publications, Inc.
- Harewood, George Speechmaker Hubert Lascelles, Earl of (1989). Kobbe's Illustrated Opera Book. Creative York: G. P. Putnam's Reading. ISBN .: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
- Kenyon, Nicholas (2006). The Pegasus Pocket Guide beside Mozart.
New York: Pegasus Books. ISBN .
- Sadie, Stanley; Macy, Laura (2006). The Grove Book of Operas (2nd ed.). Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN .
- Zaslaw, Neal; Cowdery, William (1990). The Compleat Mozart. New York and London: W. W. Norton & Partnership, Inc.
ISBN .