A Roll in the Hay with Mozart's Don Giovanni
The Plot Summary

Don Giovanni Decoded: A Tale from Mozart, With a Spoiler in the Title

Don Giovanni is an opera in two acts, sung in Italian, with words by Lorenzo Da Ponte, and it follows a charming nobleman whose luck runs out within a single day. The full title, Il dissoluto punito ossia Don Giovanni, means "The Rake Punished, or Don Giovanni", so I'm not hiding the ending from you, much like a thriller that gives away its last scene in the title and still keeps you watching. Da Ponte called it a dramma giocoso, a mix of serious and comic roles, which is why a duel, a seduction and a stone dinner guest can all share one story. First I'll introduce the people involved, and then we'll walk through both acts, with masks, disguises and one invitation that Giovanni should never have sent.

Meet the Cast: The Troublemaker and His Unlucky Neighbors

Don Giovanni: Don Giovanni is the nobleman at the center of everything, a charmer who treats every woman he meets as a new adventure. He is quick, fearless and completely without remorse, and he talks his way out of trouble as easily as he talks his way into it. Everyone else in the opera is reacting to him.
Leporello: Leporello is Giovanni's servant, who keeps watch, carries the bags and reads out the famous catalogue of his master's conquests. He complains about the job, yet he stays at his master's side. Part conscience, part accomplice, he is the one who lets us laugh at his master and worry about him.
Donna Anna: Donna Anna is a noblewoman whose night is torn apart when a masked man pursues her and her father is killed. She is proud, fierce and consumed by grief, and she demands vengeance. She is the most serious voice in the opera, and the one who will not let the matter rest.
Don Ottavio: Don Ottavio is Donna Anna's fiancé, a gentle and loyal man who swears to avenge her father. He is the steady, decent figure in a story full of people behaving badly. Anna extracts that vow from him, and he spends much of the opera trying to be worthy of it.

Meet the Cast, Part Two: The Wronged, the Wedded and One Very Stubborn Statue

Donna Elvira: Donna Elvira is a woman Giovanni once married and abandoned, and she cannot quite decide whether she wants revenge or him back. She keeps turning up wherever he goes, and she is never shy about confronting him. Her anger is real, but so is her tenderness, which makes her the most complicated person in the story.
Zerlina: Zerlina is a bride on her wedding day, cheerful and a little flattered when a nobleman begins to flirt with her. She is torn between Giovanni's charm and her fiancé Masetto. Her duet with Giovanni is one of the sweetest moments in the opera, and one of the most dangerous.
Masetto: Masetto is Zerlina's fiancé, a man who is jealous of every glance directed at his bride. He distrusts Giovanni from the start, and his suspicion is entirely justified. In Act 2 he is the one who gets beaten by Giovanni, who is disguised as Leporello.
The Commendatore: The Commendatore is Donna Anna's father, who steps in to defend her and is killed in a duel by Giovanni. That should be the end of his part, but a graveyard statue of him accepts a dinner invitation and arrives at supper. He is the voice of judgment, and the only guest Giovanni cannot charm.

Act 1, Part One: A Night That Starts Badly

A night watch and a masked pursuer: Leporello keeps watch outside the Commendatore's house while his master, masked, pursues Donna Anna. The story takes place within a single day, and it opens with a servant standing guard and his master doing something he should not. From the first scene you can tell that this comedy has a dangerous side.
A duel that changes everything: Donna Anna's father, the Commendatore, confronts the masked intruder, and Giovanni kills him in a duel before fleeing. It is a shocking thing to do so early in a story that also makes you laugh. Everything that follows is shaped by this one act of violence, which Giovanni treats as an inconvenience rather than a crime.
A vow of vengeance: Donna Anna extracts a vow of vengeance from her fiancé Don Ottavio, and together they swear to find the unknown killer. Whether Giovanni succeeded with her that night is something nobody knows, because the libretto leaves it deliberately unclear. That uncertainty gives her scenes a shadow, and it gives the serious side of the story its weight.
Elvira storms in: Donna Elvira, a woman Giovanni once married and abandoned, finally catches up with him and confronts him. She is hurt and furious, yet she cannot quite stop caring. Her arrival turns Giovanni's past into a present problem, and it shows that his charm has left real damage behind.

Act 1, Part Two: A List, a Bride and a Guest List That Backfires

The catalogue of conquests: Leporello answers Elvira's fury with the catalogue aria, a list of his master's conquests. By his count there are 640 in Italy, 231 in Germany, 100 in France, 91 in Turkey and 1,003 in Spain. The aria is very funny, but the numbers also show exactly what kind of man Giovanni is.
A wedding and a seduction: At the wedding of Zerlina and Masetto, Giovanni tries to seduce the bride, and he lures her away with the duet Là ci darem la mano. Zerlina is torn between this charming stranger and her fiancé Masetto, and her resolve starts to wobble. The festive scene turns into a trap, set to some of the sweetest music in the act.
A ball and three masks: Giovanni holds a ball, and among the guests are three people in masks: Anna, Ottavio and Elvira. They have not come to dance, they have come to settle accounts. At the right moment they unmask and denounce him, and the party turns from a celebration into a trial.
Giovanni slips away: Exposed in front of his own guests, Giovanni escapes. He does not apologize and he does not slow down, and nothing in his manner suggests that he has learned anything. The first act ends with a man who has been caught and who still seems sure that nothing can touch him, which sets up everything in the second act.

Act 2, Part One: Borrowed Coats and a Bad Joke in the Graveyard

Cloaks and hats change hands: Giovanni and Leporello exchange cloaks and hats so that Giovanni can pursue Elvira's maid. The point is pursuit, not escape, and Giovanni is as shameless as ever. Mistaken identity drives the comedy here, and it hands the servant a nobleman's coat without any of the nobleman's nerve.
Masetto pays the price: Disguised as Leporello, Giovanni beats Masetto. It is an ugly moment tucked inside a comedy, and it reminds us that Giovanni's charm has a hard edge. Masetto, who only wanted to protect his bride, is the one who pays for the disguise, and the scene shows how little Giovanni cares who gets hurt.
A mocking invitation: In a cemetery Giovanni mockingly invites the statue of the Commendatore to dinner, and the statue accepts. This is the moment when the comedy stops being safe. A joke that should have gone unanswered gets a reply, and you can feel the story turn toward the supernatural.
Supper with a house band: Giovanni sits down to supper while an orchestra on stage plays tunes from Martín y Soler's Una cosa rara, Sarti's Fra i due litiganti and my own Non più andrai from Le nozze di Figaro. The mood is cheerful and unsuspecting, which makes what comes next all the more startling.

Act 2, Part Two: A Supper With a Very Cold Guest

The guest arrives: Then the statue arrives, invites Giovanni to dine with him in turn, and demands that he repent. Giovanni shakes the statue's hand and is overcome by a sudden chill. Even so he refuses to repent, and that stubbornness sums up his whole character in a single moment.
A sound saved for the end: Three trombones play only at the end of Act 2, in the statue scene, and I keep them silent until then. Their dark weight makes the supernatural feel physical, as if the walls of the dining room were closing in. Saving a sound for one moment is a simple trick, and it works every time.
Down to Hell: Demons carry Giovanni down to Hell, and I chose to show his damnation right on stage. That was rare in eighteenth-century opera, and it lets the audience see the consequence with their own eyes. The key of D minor, which stands for death and judgment, has been waiting for this moment since the overture.
The moral of the story: The other characters announce their plans and sing the moral together: this is the evil-doer's end. It is a tidy conclusion, though Giovanni's charm makes it hard to feel entirely comfortable about it. You leave having laughed, shivered and been told exactly what to think, and perhaps not quite believing it.

Curtain Call in Prague

I finished the opera in Prague by early October 1787, and the first performance took place at the National Theatre, now the Estates Theatre, with me conducting. Luigi Bassi sang the title role, and the audience answered with thunderous applause. The date is usually given as 29 October, though some sources say 28 October, and the story goes that I wrote the overture through the night before. I later revised the opera for Vienna, where it was given on 7 May 1788 with new arias, but the story of a charmer and his reckoning stayed the same.