Gasparo Angiolini, director of ballet at the Imperial Theater in Vienna. All the members of this gang of four were reformers. Their collaboration resulted in the reform ballet Don Juan ou Le Festin de Pierre [“Don Juan or the Stone Guest’s Banquet”]. Calzabigi supplied the plot synopsis based upon Moliere’s play Don Juan ou le Festin de pierre (1665), and Angiolini did the choreography. The basic story of the ballet’s plotline is familiar to many of us from Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni from two decades later. The setting is Madrid. While Don Juan is serenading Dona Elvira, her father the Commander enters with sword drawn to defend her. Don Juan kills the Commander during the skirmish. Don Juan later invites his friends to a banquet that includes much dancing. There is a thunderous knocking at the door. Upon opening the door, Don Juan discovers the marble statue of the dead Commander and invites him to the banquet, but the Commander reciprocates by inviting Don Juan to dinner at his tomb and departs. Don Juan then makes his way to the graveyard. When the Commander rises from his tomb, Don Juan makes light of this terrifying affair — but the judgement passed upon him is irrevocable, and he sinks down into Hell. The suite we are hearing at this week’s concert opens with a brief, robust Sinfonia. The ensuing pieces cover a gamut of dance forms from stately and courtly to stylized gavotte and minuet (some of the same kind of repetitive forms against which Noverre had railed, but presumbably danced with more intent and action) and on to tender airs. Simple homophonic textures give way to dramatic outbursts expressive of foreboding doom, freed from the bonds of courtly niceties. The ballet’s premiere took place on October 17, 1761 at Vienna’s Theater am Kärntnertor. —Steve LaCoste © 2017 Steve LaCoste has served as archivist of the Los Angeles Philharmonic in addition to writing program notes for a variety of institutions.
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̱ Ǥ ʹ ̱ ʹ Severance Hall 2017-18
About the Music
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