A Roll in the Hay with Mozart's Don Giovanni
The Best Moments
Don Giovanni, K. 527, opera in two acts (1787)
I'm Mozart, and what you'll find here are the best moments of my opera Don Giovanni. You'll listen to the stern chords that open the overture and then come back, darker still, when a stone guest turns up for supper, and that link makes the whole story feel like one night. On this site my fellow composers and I also teach you to recognize our pieces when they play, so give the Trainer a go and test yourself.
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A Loud Knock Before the Story Starts
I open the Overture with a thundering D minor cadence, the kind of chord that makes everyone in the hall stop whispering and sit up straight. Then comes a short, mysterious passage, as if the orchestra is tiptoeing through a dark house, before the music hops into a light-hearted D major allegro and acts as though nothing happened.
A Very Polite Invitation
Once the story is under way, I give Giovanni his smoothest moment in Là ci darem la mano, where he tries to lure Zerlina away from her wedding to Masetto. It begins in A major, andante, in 2/4, with the two of them taking turns, and when a chromatic slide shows that her resolve is weakening, the music speeds up into an allegro in 6/8 and they finally sing together.
The Guest Who Took Him at His Word
I bring the story back to invitations with Don Giovanni, a cenar teco, where the statue of the Commendatore, whom Giovanni mockingly invited to dinner in the cemetery, arrives at the supper. He sings "You invited me to dine with you" over the chords from my overture, now darker with diminished sevenths, and even after Giovanni shakes his hand and feels a sudden chill, he still refuses to repent.
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When the last chord fades and Giovanni has gone down to Hell, I like to sit still for a moment before I say anything. I gave him charm, danger and a very bad end, and I never quite decided whether to scold him or to smile at him. That is partly why Da Ponte called the opera a dramma giocoso, a mix of serious and comic, and why it still feels alive to me. The story fits into a single day, yet people have kept turning it over for much longer than that. I hope you enjoyed learning about the best moments of Don Giovanni as much as I enjoyed sharing them with you. Did the knock of the Overture, the honeyed invitation to Zerlina and the cold handshake of the statue stay with you? There is still a lot more to explore in this opera. I haven't yet taken you through Leporello's famous catalogue of conquests, or through the puzzle of what really happened to Donna Anna that night. I also revised the opera for Vienna in 1788, with new arias, so even I didn't treat it as finished after Prague. Years later, in 1827, Chopin wrote a set of variations on Là ci darem la mano, which shows how far one little duet can travel. If you'd like to keep going, I invite you to click on the links provided and follow whichever part of Don Giovanni catches your curiosity. Listen once more with the Overture in your ear, and I think you'll hear that stern opening chord waiting for Giovanni all the way through.