A Roll in the Hay with Mozart's Don Giovanni
The Backstory
Don Giovanni, K. 527, opera in two acts (1787)
I'm Mozart, and this is the backstory of my opera Don Giovanni. You'll learn how I finished it in Prague in the autumn of 1787 and then conducted its first performance there, which was met with thunderous applause. Because my fellow composers and I also teach you here to recognize our pieces when you hear them, why not try the Trainer yourself?
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Following Up on a Hit
Not long before, Lorenzo Da Ponte had written the words for my Le nozze di Figaro. So when a new opera came up, it felt natural to work with him again. Together we chose a story about a charming nobleman who cannot stop chasing trouble. I won't tell you yet how that goes for him.An Old Rascal With Many Names
Our nobleman was already famous long before I got to him, because the Don Juan legend goes back to a Spanish play by Tirso de Molina from 1630. People sometimes guess that Casanova was the model, but nothing I know of ties him to this opera. The legend had been told so many times that audiences arrived knowing the type, if not the details. That meant Da Ponte and I could play with what they expected.Borrowing From the Neighbors
Da Ponte was not shy about looking at what others had done, and he drew on Molière's comedy of 1665 and a play by Goldoni from 1736. There was also a very recent opera, Don Giovanni Tenorio by Giovanni Bertati and Giuseppe Gazzaniga, written in the same year as mine, 1787. In those days nobody minded a good story being reused, as long as you made something new of it. I like to think we took the old bones and gave them a much stranger heartbeat.From Vienna to Prague With a Pen
I wrote most of the opera in the summer of 1787 in Vienna. Then I traveled to Prague, where I finished it by early October. That is a lot of music to carry around in one head, and the singers were waiting for it. I count myself lucky that the road between the two cities was kinder to me than it is to my hero.A Title With Second Thoughts
The full title is Il dissoluto punito ossia Don Giovanni, which means "The Rake Punished, or Don Giovanni". You could say the title gives away the ending, but the journey there is the real point. Da Ponte called the piece a dramma giocoso, a mix of serious and comic characters, while in my own catalogue I simply wrote opera buffa. I never settled on one label, because the piece keeps swinging between laughter and something far darker.The Overture That Waited
The story goes that I wrote the overture only the night before the premiere, and some people say I worked on it all night. That part is an anecdote, but my catalogue does record it as finished on 28 October 1787. Whatever the truth is, the copyists had very little time to turn my pages into parts for the players. It is a comfort to know the orchestra managed, because I would not have wanted to explain a missing overture.Opening Night in Prague
The first performance took place at the National Theatre, which today is called the Estates Theatre, on 29 October 1787. A few sources say 28 October, so the exact day is one of those small mysteries I have given up worrying about. I conducted it myself, and the audience received it with thunderous applause. After the nerves of the night before, that was a very welcome sound.One Day, One Singer, Many Questions
Luigi Bassi sang the title role at the premiere, so he was the first man ever to be Don Giovanni on that stage. The whole story takes place within a single day, which makes the trouble pile up very quickly. Some events of that day are left deliberately unclear, and what happens between Giovanni and Donna Anna is one of them. I never explained it, and I am happy that people still argue about it.A Dinner Party With Borrowed Tunes
Late in the opera there is a supper scene, and a small orchestra on stage plays background music for the guest of honor. The tunes are real ones, from Martín y Soler's Una cosa rara, from Sarti's Fra i due litiganti, and from my own Non più andrai in Figaro. I enjoyed slipping in a quotation from myself, a little like signing a painting in the corner. But I will say that something far less cheerful is on its way to that table, and I saved three trombones for it, which play only at the very end of Act 2.Second Helpings and Long Echoes
I revised the opera for Vienna, where it was given on 7 May 1788 with new arias. Singers and audiences are different in every city, and a composer learns to adjust. The music kept traveling long after I was gone, and in 1827 Chopin wrote his Variations on Là ci darem la mano, Op. 2. It is flattering to think that a tune I wrote for a theater in Prague inspired a young pianist, and that is a good reason to listen to the whole thing yourself.---
So that is how Don Giovanni came to life, from a Spanish play of 1630 to a Prague stage in the autumn of 1787. I hope you enjoyed learning about the backstory of Don Giovanni, and that it left you curious to hear more. I like to think of the opera as a story that keeps changing a little each time you meet it. Even now, the libretto leaves some things unsaid, and nobody knows for certain what really happened between Giovanni and Donna Anna on that night. There is still a great deal more to explore in Don Giovanni. You could listen for the way the opening chords of the Overture come back, darker than before, when the statue appears in Act 2. You could also follow the story of the revised version I prepared for Vienna in 1788, with its new arias. If you'd like to keep going, please click on the links below and see where they lead you. I'd be glad to have you with me for the next step.