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October 29, 1787, in Prague, Czech Republic, a city in which his music was es- pecially popular (Much of Amadeus was filmed in the theater in which the op- era was premiered ; see chapter-opening photo.) As fate would have it, the most notorious Don Juan of the eighteenth century, Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798), was in the audience that first night in Prague. It turns out that he had a small hand in helping his friend da Ponte shape the libretto.
Although Don Giovanni is charming and clever, the rape and murder he perpetrates isn’t funny. The comedy in Don Giovanni emanates not from the rakish Don, but rather from his worldly wise servant, Leporello, who points out the contradictions (the basis of all humor) in his master’s life and in society in general.
As the curtain rises, we find the reluctant accomplice Leporello keeping watch outside the house of Donna Anna, while his master is inside attempting to satisfy his sexual appetite (Figure 9.10). Grumbling as he paces back and forth, Leporello sings that he would gladly trade places with the fortunate aristocrat (“Notte e giorno faticar” [“I would like to play the gentleman”]); see Listening Cue. Immediately, Mozart establishes Leporello’s musical character: He sets this opening aria in F major, a traditional key for the pastoral in music, showing that Leporello is a rustic fellow; he gives him a narrow vocal range without anything fancy; and he has him sing quick, repeated pitches, almost as if stuttering. This last technique, called “patter song,” is a stock device used to depict low-caste, inarticulate characters in comic opera.
As Leporello concludes his complaint, the masked Don Giovanni rushes onstage, chased by the virtuous Donna Anna. Here the strings rush up the scale and the music modulates upward (at 1:40) to signify that we are now dealing with the highborn. The victim of Don Giovanni’s unwanted sexual assault, Don- na Anna wants her assailant captured and unmasked. While the nobleman and lady carry on a musical tug-of-war in long notes above, servant Leporello patters
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FiguRe 9.10
Don Giovanni (Roderick
Williams) tries to seduce Donna Anna (Suzannah Glanville) at the be- ginning of a 2005 British production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Note the similarity in approach to The Phan- tom of the Opera by Andrew Lloyd Webber. Lloyd Webber drew heavily from Mozart’s Don Giovanni. For ex- ample, the opera that the Phantom composes in Act II is called Don Juan [Giovanni] Triumphant, which tries to tell this timeless tale of seduction from Don Juan’s point of view. <
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