Don Giovanni is a story of a ruthless playboy and trickster who refuses to learn a lesson, even when everybody tries to forgive him and even when facing the spirits of the underworld themselves: Don Giovanni won’t give in. Despite the crimes and cruelties of the narrative, Mozart kept the opera entertaining and a wonderful source of laughs, joy - and insight.
The story of Don Giovanni
In sixteen century Spain, the servant Leporello waits impatiently while his master, Don Giovanni, is violently breaking into the sleeping chambers of Donna Anna, the Commendatore’s daughter. The old Commendatore hears Anna’s screams, runs into Don Giovanni and is killed by him in duel. Don Giovanni escapes unrecognized, while poor Anna finds her father death. Donna Anna is in horror and grief. Her fiancé, Don Ottavio, is seeking revenge for the rape and for the murder.
Don Giovanni ain’t bothered with a bad conscience and is already flirting with another woman in a tavern. Too late he recognizes her as Donna Elvira, a woman he had already seduced and abandoned. Don Giovanni escapes from her and leaves his servant Leporello with Donna Elvira, letting him read Elvira from the diary of his conquers. Alone in the lands of Spain Don Giovanni had laid with one thousand and three women…
Peasants arrive at the tavern to celebrate the marriage of Zerlina and Masetto. Giovanni arrives and pursues the bride while threatening Masetto. Zerlina is blinded by the fashionable and seemingly noble Giovanni swearing eternal vows, and is about to leave her husband. But Donna Elvira finds them and finally whisks the girl away, back in the arms of her grudging husband Masetto. However, Giovanni is rather forcing upon them an invitation to some festivities, which his servant Leporelle is going to organize.
In the meantime Donna Anna became suspicious about the noble Don Giovanni. She has the feeling that it was him, who was attacking her home in the night. Anna’s husband, Don Ottavio, is in rage and sets out with some friends to punish Don Giovanni for his evil deeds. Giovanni recognizes the pursuit and hides with Leporello. Their hiding place happens to be the grave of Anna’s father, the Commendatore. Leporello is in horror, while Giovanni is mockingly inviting the grave statue for dinner. Giovanni swaps the appearance with his servant, hoping to have better chances to flee when pretending to be Leporello. When the revenge party finally finds him, Giovanni wins as Leporello the confidence of Don Ottavio and pretends to help hunting down Don Giovanni. At the first opportunity Giovanni attacks Don Ottavio in a cowardly fashion and beats him close to death.
Later, Elvira, Anna and an ill shaped Ottavio band together. They mask themselves, giving the impression of some noble party folks, and arrive at the festivities arranged by Leporello. They are invited in to join the party. Don Giovanni is again chasing after Zerlina, the lone reason why the party was arranged at all. He separates Zerlina from the rest of the crowd and feels close to being successful in his arts of seduction. However, his plans are shattered by the group of Elvira, Anna and Ottavio; Giovanni flees again. Everybody seems to agree that there is something weird in Giovanni’s nature, and that he must change his life to save his soul.
Later, Elvira visits Giovanni during dinner and begs him to reform. As always he refuses when suddenly another completely unexpected guest arrives. The statue of the Commendatore appears at the door. Giovanni is rather amused and invites him in, thanking the statue to have followed his invitation from the graveyard. Finally the Commendatore’s statue demands from Giovanni, that he may repent. Giovanni refuses and accepts himself the invitation of the statue for dinner - against the urgent advice of Leporello as this dinner will be in hell, as one must assume.
The house bursts in flames and the Commendatore drags Giovanni down into the underworld. Outside of the castle’s ruins, the others muse rather content that “such is the end of the evildoer.”
Mozart and Giovanni
While Mozart set Don Giovanni in Spain, he was actually writing of his own Vienna. Even though Mozart himself declared the opera to be an opera buffa, Don Giovanni is certainly not one of Mozart’s typical comedies, and for once, a touch of bitterness touches the story. Most of Europe was ruled by a landed aristocracy, who lived their merry lives indifferent to the problems of the peasants around them. Giovanni does as he pleases and doesn’t care whom he hurts. He seduces at his own pleasure. He bullies his servant Leporello. He threatens to beat the peasant Masetto when Masetto objects to Giovanni’s seduction of his bride. The class system was well in place and rarely questioned. Mozart, who lived at the time of the overthrow of the British monarchy by American rebels, asks if this defiance of the class system can come to Europe, to replace the divine right of monarchs with the inalienable rights of man.
Don Giovanni gets his punishment. Yet it is not the people surrounding him whom he has wronged who are responsible for his demise, but the dead statue. There is no lower class uprising against the libertine and nobleman, Don Giovanni. At the end of the opera, his beleaguered servant goes in search of another master. Life without a master is something he can’t imagine. The peasant couple, Masetto and Zerlina, just want to go home and have dinner. If there is a trace of bitterness in Don Giovanni, it is directed at the complacency of the underclass that, while complaining about mistreatment, is too apathetic to do anything but continue a life of servitude.