Program booklet »Don Giovanni«

WOLFGANG A M ADEUS MOZART

DON GIOVANNI

CONTENTS

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4

SYNOPSIS P.

8

WAITING FOR THE COMMENDATORE BARRIE KOSKY IN AN INTERVIEW

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30

THE CHEERINESS OF THE DRAMA NIKOLAUS STENITZER P.

36

18

TURNED UPSIDE DOWN SERGIO MORABITO

PENTHEUS AND BACCHUS OVID

IMPRINT

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P.

22

DON GIOVANNI HAS BROUGHT THEM ALL DOWN WITH HIM PHILIPPE JORDAN

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40

WOLFGANG A M ADEUS MOZART

DON GIOVANNI DRAMMA GIOCOSO in two acts Libretto LORENZO DA PONTE Based (inter alia) on the dramma giocoso

Don Giovanni o sia Il convitato di pietra

by Giovanni Bertati

ORCHESTRA

STAGE ORCHESTRA

2 flutes / 2 oboes 2 clarinets / 2 bassoons 2 horns / 2 trumpets / 3 trombones timpani / mandolin / strings Continuo: hammerklavier / cello FINALE, ACT 1: Orchestra I: 2 oboes / 2 horns violins / violas double bass Orchestra II: violins / double bass Orchestra III: violins / double bass FINALE, ACT 2: 2 oboes / 2 clarinets 2 bassoons / 2 horns / cello

AUTOGRAPH Bibliothèque Nationale de France WORLD PREMIÈRE 29 OCTOBER 1787 National Theatre of Prague PREMIÈRE AT THE WIENER STAATSOPER 25 MAY 1869 (opening of the house) DURATION

3 H 15 MIN

INCL. 1 INTERMISSION

D ON G IOVA N N I

SYNOPSIS ACT 1 Don Giovanni’s servant Leporello dreams of one day being a master instead of always being the servant.

Donna Anna tries to stop Don Giovanni from fleeing. She calls for help. Don Giovanni declares that she will never find out who he is.

Donna Anna’s father, the Commendatore, corners Don Giovanni. In the ensuing fight, Don Giovanni fatally injures the Commendatore and makes his escape with Leporello, who reproaches him.

Donna Anna urges her fiancé, Don Ottavio, to help her father, but when they arrive the Commendatore is already dead. Donna Anna extracts a promise from her fiancé that he will avenge her father’s death.

Don Giovanni is out in search of a new conquest. Instead, he and Leporello encounter Donna Elvira, who accuses Giovanni of having deceived and seduced her with false promises. While Leporello distracts Donna Elvira, Don Giovanni is able to escape.

Together with their friends, Masetto and Zerlina are celebrating love, youth and their upcoming marriage. Don Giovanni and Leporello observe the scene with interest. Don Giovanni orders Leporello to take the assembled company, and above all the bridegroom, to his palace and entertain them there; he and Zerlina will follow later. He answers Masetto’s objections with an ill-concealed threat. Masetto is forced to relent.

Don Giovanni invites Zerlina to his nearby palace, saying he plans to marry her there. Initially Zerlina hesitates, but then agrees. The two of them are interrupted by Donna Elvira, who warns Zerlina about the seducer and leaves with her.

Don Ottavio and Donna Anna ask for Don Giovanni’s help look­­ing for the unknown murderer of the Commendatore. Once again, Donna Elvira enters and warns them about Giovanni’s nefarious nature. In response, Giovanni insinuates that Elvira has lost her senses; he follows her when she leaves. Don Giovanni’s demeanour has revealed to Donna Anna that this is the man who murdered her father. She again calls on Don Ottavio to avenge her.

Don Giovanni tells Leporello to prepare a celebration at which he plans to make new conquests.

Previous pages: PHILIPPE SLY

as LEPORELLO KYLE KETELSEN as DON GIOVANNI

4

SYNOPSIS

Zerlina tries to convince Masetto that nothing happened between her and Don Giovanni. Don Giovanni enters and urges both of them to celebrate with him.

Donna Anna, Donna Elvira and Don Ottavio approach, masked. At Don Giovanni’s bidding, Leporello invites them to the party. Don Giovanni disappears with Zerlina. Soon she is heard crying for help. Donna Anna, Donna Elvira, Don Ottavio and Masetto rush to protect her. Don Giovanni points to Leporello as the guilty party.

The others don’t believe him, but they are also unable to catch Don Giovanni.

ACT 2 Don Giovanni forces Leporello to exchange clothes with him.

Disguised as his servant, he wants to seduce Donna Elvira’s maid, while Leporello keeps Donna Elvira occupied. Leporello takes delight in heaping flattery on Donna Elvira.

Instead of the new conquest he had hoped for, Don Giovanni runs into Masetto, who is armed and looking for him. However, Masetto does not recognise him in Leporello’s clothes. After Giovanni has relieved him of his weapons, Giovanni gives him a thrashing.

Zerlina finds her injured fiancé and tends to his wounds.

Leporello tries to escape from Donna Elvira. He runs into Donna Anna and Don Ottavio, Zerlina and Masetto, who mistake him for Don Giovanni. They are determined to kill him. Donna Elvira begs them to have pity. Leporello reveals his identity and asserts his innocence. Making excuses, he manages to escape.

Donna Elvira is torn between feeling vengeance and concern for Don Giovanni.

Don Giovanni and Leporello meet in the cemetery. Don Giovanni takes great delight in recounting his latest amorous escapades.

The voice of the Commendatore warns them not to disturb the rest of the dead.

Don Giovanni laughs at the old man and orders Leporello to invite the Commendatore to dinner. Leporello pronounces the invitation. The Commendatore accepts.

Don Ottavio offers Donna Anna comfort and his hand. She begs his understanding of her situation and asks him to be patient.

Don Giovanni prepares a sumptuous dinner. Donna Elvira appears. She urges Giovanni to change his ways. Giovanni mocks her. Elvira leaves, and is then heard to cry out in horror.

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D ON G IOVA N N I

The Commendatore enters.

He offers Don Giovanni a reciprocal invitation. Don Giovanni accepts. He grasps the hand offered him and is alarmed by its ice-cold touch. The Commendatore calls on Don Giovanni to repent and change his lifestyle: this is his last opportunity. Don Giovanni declines. Voices announce his punishment. Don Giovanni collapses.

Donna Anna, Donna Elvira, Don Ottavio, Zerlina and Masetto arrive to punish Don Giovanni in suitable fashion. They find only Leporello, who tells them of the fate that has befallen Don Giovanni. The party disperses, but not before summing up: the death of evildoers always reflects how they have lived their lives.

6

STANISLAS DE BARBEYRAC

as DON OTTAVIO HANNA-ELISABETH MÜLLER as DONNA ANNA

DIRECTOR BARRIE KOSKY IN AN INTERVIEW WITH NIKOLAUS STENITZER

WAITING

FOR THE COMMENDATORE ns

The myth of the “stone guest” is older than the first dramatisa­ tion by Tirso de Molina from the early 17 th century, which estab­ lished Don Juan as the name of the protagonist. Mozart’s piece has generated its own com­ pletely different myth, which was also marked by the Roman­ tic reception in the 19th century, such as E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Don Juan short story, or even Søren Kierkegaard. What does Don Juan mean to you – as a piece and as a myth? bk In the opera by Mozart and Da Ponte there are many threads leading to the past, other plays, the history of the story. Just like Shakespeare. None of his great tragedies was an original story. Macbeth, King Lear, Hamlet all existed in other pieces, in other forms.

Shakespeare completely reworked the ideas and the characters, which resulted in his masterpieces. The previous pieces were interesting, but not masterpieces. ns As with Don Giovanni? bk I think so. We don’t have so much information about what the basic idea

of Da Ponte and Mozart was when they took up the story, but I think that’s more of an advantage. We have to imag­ ine that as conveyed by the music and the libretto, and what we know about the two artists. What I find new in the Don Giovanni of Da Ponte and Mozart, and what makes the opera so rich and multi-faceted is the fatherhood theme – father and son, father and daughter. For me, this is a flashback to classical antiquity, to Electra and Agamemnon. ns Electra is obsessed with aveng­ ing the murder of her father, Agamemnon. bk That’s one of the references for me. But there are others, older ones.

The Old Testament, with Abraham and Isaac. And the basic abstract idea of God in the Jewish tradition is essen­ tially an invisible, unimaginable father figure. A father who punishes and judges. Who never leaves. The roots of Don Giovanni are accordingly the Old Testament, with the figure of the Patriarch, we have references to Greek mytho­ logy, and there is of course a strong Christian element. Finally, there are incredibly interesting references

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outside mythology and religion, going back to the beginning of the theatrical tradition. In Greek comedy with Aristophanes we already see the combination of master and servant, master and slave. Along with husband and wife and father and daughter, one of the original relationships in Greek theatre. ns You mentioned a combination here which is very important in this piece, the one with Don Giovanni and Leporello. How do you interpret this relationship in your production? bk For a long time I thought of Don Giovanni and Leporello simply as two sides of the same coin. The duality, the doppelgänger principle which was often to be seen in productions. These days I think that the relationship can’t be limited to this. Our version has evolved gravely in the course of rehearsal, particularly from the inter­ action between Philippe Sly, our Lepo­ rello, and Kyle Ketelsen, our Don Giovanni. After one scene I said to Philippe, “It’s great when you’re playing with Don Giovanni as if you were a boy and he was your father. You admire him and hate him at the same time, and allow him to humiliate you because you want him to acknowledge you.” We worked on that, and so the principle of the father got incorporated into the classical relationship of master and slave. This is an additional facet of the relationship between Leporello and Don Giovanni in our production which surprised me. ns You also described the two once as Vladimir and Estragon, the protagonists of Waiting for Godot. bk Yes, they have this Beckett qual­ ity in many scenes. They’re playing

“Waiting for the Commendatore.” We show them in different combinations.

Sometimes they’re master and servant, or master and slave, or they seem to be in a dominatrix relationship as we see in sexual play. ns How do you show the constella­ tion of characters in your pro­ duction? bk In our production the women are the ones looking for their identity, much more so than the men. In Mozart’s operas the women are always the central figures, they have the conflicts.

Donna Anna and the loss of her father, whom Don Ottavio can’t replace, is naturally the central theme, but the father theme goes beyond this direct family relationship and the loss. The figure of the Commendatore is the principle of patriarchy. We find the dualism of love and destruction of the father in every culture, from antiquity to Sigmund Freud. During one rehearsal I told the singers, “This is an opera about foundlings. There’s no mother anywhere. Nobody has a mother.” This is very different from Figaro, where Susanna and the Countess are a surrogate mother for many people. That’s to say nothing about Marcellina, who changes from a threat to Figaro and Susanna to a loving mother, so that Figaro changes from being a foundling to a returning son. In Don Giovanni there are no parents left after the death of the father. And we know from mythology, from Electra and Orestes, what happens when the parents disappear from the scene. Rage and obsession, self-obsession. I think there’s a connection between Don Giovanni and what is surely Shakespeare’s most important work, Hamlet. The return of the punishing father is perhaps one of the worst

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BARRIE KOSKY IN AN INTERVIEW

human nightmares. Probably one of our archaic traumata. ns So a psychoanalytical interpre­ tation? bk We’re doing Don Giovanni in Vienna, there’s no getting away from it. Here, you get the Interpretation of Dreams in the tap water. ns You’ve often made a further con­ nection between Don Giovanni and classical mythology – to Dionysus. You could unders­ tand the cry “Viva la libertà” in the first finale as an appeal to Dionysus. In Roman mythol­ogy, “Liber” is one of the names of the god, besides “Bacchus”. Shortly after “Viva la libertà” in the opera we hear Zerlina calling for help, there could be violence, at least death threats. Dionysus is the god of joy, but he’s also vio­ lent and destructive. Which ver­ sion of the Dionysian do we see in your production? bk We see many facets of this. I don’t think Don Giovanni himself is Dionysus. He’s a child of Dionysus.

What does this mean? Dionysus is a god full of contradictions. He’s the god of the theatre – which makes him the god of deceit, make-believe and play as well. A god of costume and transformation. He’s closely tied to the question of what’s real and what’s just play. He moves around, wanders, has no home. His mother Semele is dead, his father Zeus is absent, inaccessible.

He’s left him. And that’s important as well, if we’re making the connection with Don Giovanni. And you can’t separate his two most important characteristics. The creative in him is part of the destructive, and the destructive belongs to the creative. As the god of

ecstasy, he represents the opposite of ethics and morality. He can only be Don Giovanni’s patron. For me, “Viva la libertà” isn’t a call to revolution, it means: Fuck ethics. Fuck morals. Let’s drink and fuck and play whatever music we want and who the fuck cares.

That’s Dionysian. ns But that also means that cele­ brating with Dionysus is always on the brink. It can quickly turn dangerous. bk Exactly. Dionysus is the perfect personification of Eros and Thanatos, the combination of life and death.

Everybody knows that too much wine can lead to murder, and often does.

Wine releases the unconscious, and the unconscious is where Dionysus lives. He lives on the surface of the unconscious. ns You’ve often talked about this dynamic in conversation with singers. According to Freud, Eros and Thanatos, the life drive and death drive both operate in us. There are different analytical interpretations of whether we lead a constant hopeless strug­ gle for survival, whether follow­ ing our sexual drives raises or lowers tensions which keep us from death. Is the unconscious presence of mortality the basis for Don Giovanni’s excess? bk I think the riddle of life lies in the tango which Eros and Thanatos dance with each other. The dance never ends, the music never stops until we die. It’s not for me as a director and artist, and – honestly – as a human being to try to understand why there is this dance. I only know that it’s there. And I don’t think it’s for me as a director to say, “Don Giovanni is a piece about …”

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or “Don Giovanni is a man who …” I have a particular idea which I develop with the team and the singers, and it’s not my goal for the audience to leave the theatre at the end saying, “Now I understand what this Don Giovanni is about.” And that’s just not possible.

He’s a child of Dionysus. He will always remain a riddle. This piece requires an approach from me which is entirely different from the one I’d take with Figaro or Così fan tutte. I feel like I did when directing Richard Strauss’s Salome, I had a sense of what’s right and what’s not. And it’s like that with Don Giovanni. ns The set for your production is a bare area which changes, a place you can’t pinpoint. It represents the landscape of the unconscious, although not directly. bk No, not directly. It was very clear to me and Katrin Lea Tag, the set designer, that we were looking for an abstract image. I didn’t want any walls, rooms, doors. It needed to be a landscape the characters are moving on, without actually knowing where they are. And we don’t know either. But at the same time, interpretations and associations evolved in rehearsal that hadn’t been thought of in advance.

We established, for example, that this stone landscape that we see was once lava, it was once hot and liquid. Or we got the feeling that the surface is like dead, sloughed skin. Both of these said that there was something here once.

We’re moving on a surface which relates to the past, that you can interpret in different ways. And finally, the set is deeply inspired by the last scene of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s film Teorema, in which the father figure in the film moves in just such a volcanic landscape. A

scene with great archaic quality. The area needed to have a lot of associations, but not one meaning. And I very much like that the separation between indoors and outdoors is irrelevant. We don’t know if it’s indoors or outdoors, we don’t know if it’s day or night. But even in the piece you’re constantly wondering, what time is it, then? It’s Don Giovanni’s endless night. For me, our set offers the area where the characters live, fight, love and argue without the background of a meaningful reality. ns In other words, you’re following an ambivalence that the piece offers. bk Don Giovanni is full of ambivalences – it’s the exact opposite of Le nozze di Figaro. The piece plays out in a twilight zone, shortly before sunset and at the same time shortly before sunrise. It’s difficult to grasp the order of events. Like a Kafka story, we can ask ourselves at times if it’s a dream or reality. This is very important for Don Giovanni, because the characters are constantly saying that they don’t know what’s happening. But if you say this, the characters have to be real, three-dimensional, made of flesh and blood. It’s a bit like the sensational films from the middle period of Michelangelo Antonioni, for example L’avventura. Where you’re constantly wondering, is this really just happening? Or is it someone’s memory of what happened? It looks realistic, but it isn’t at all. And I think this quality is present not just in my production but in the piece itself. And that makes the piece incredibly difficult – and magnificent. ns The film Teorema that you men­ tioned also works with a realistic setting that tells a surrealistic story.

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BARRIE KOSKY IN AN INTERVIEW

bk Together with L’avventura and the surreal comedies of Buñuel, Teor­ ema was one of the major influences.

The central character, played by Terence Stamp, is an absolutely Dionysian figure. He comes as a guest, gets everyone under his spell and destroys everything. That’s Don Giovanni. I really would have liked to see Pasolini’s version of Don Giovanni. The interesting thing is that Teorema isn’t simply about destruction. The guest in the film takes the members of a middle-class family and gets things and feelings out of them that they weren’t prepared for.

They all fall in love with him or want to sleep with him, the son, the mother, the father, the daughter, the housekeeper. He induces euphoria in them and destabilizes them. When he leaves, everything falls apart. This is exactly the effect that Don Giovanni has on other people. On the bourgeois society that Donna Anna, Don Ottavio, Donna Elvira and – at a lower level – Masetto and Zerlina belong to. ns Something Teorema has in com­ mon with your production is that it poses the uncomfortable question, where does this man get the power over others from?

How is it possible that Zerlina wants to go with Don Giovanni to his villa on her wedding day? bk It’s not an impossible situation, in theory. At your wedding you meet the most incredible person you’ve ever seen, and you want to do nothing more than go to the toilet with her and have sex. In real life there’s usually a moral barrier that stops you. But in the opera Don Giovanni has the ability to disable this barrier. This is what’s so incredible about Don Giovanni, and what makes it so difficult for all the other char-

acters. He has no morals. He has no ethics. That’s why it’s so ridiculous when they refer to his famous aria as the champagne aria. It isn’t a champagne aria, it’s the Dionysian national anthem! He says, I want wine, all the women I can get, and it doesn’t matter what dance they dance. This is something very special that Mozart does here. Dance is always strict, you dance a particular dance within a structure, you have to follow the beat, three-four, four-four. Don Giovanni says you can dance them all together. This brilliant two and a half minutes with the three orchestras on the stage are the purest Dionysian moment you can imagine. ns This type of Dionysian anarchy goes beyond a Don Giovanni interpretation we’ve seen fre­ quently in the 20th century, Don Giovanni as a rebel against the bourgeois mentality. bk That’s just one of the interpretative approaches I have trouble with. I also have a problem with the German Romantic tradition associated with E. T. A. Hoffmann. A Romantic outsider in the tradition of Shelley and Byron, or the personification of the spirit of revolution – all these ideas lead to a stereotype figure. The idea that Donna Anna is actually in love with Don Giovanni, as E. T. A. Hoffmann presents it, is utter nonsense. What there was between the two has consequences, but entirely different ones. The way I see it is that something happened in this bedroom. Donna Anna tells Don Ottavio a story about this, which I don’t think is a lie. I don’t think they had sex. Perhaps there was something starting that was interrupted. I don’t think there was a rape either. There could have been one, but given the

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way Donna Anna behaves in the rest of the piece that doesn’t make sense. Any more than the idea that she’s fascinated by him. Donna Anna’s issue is revenge for the death of her father. The additional destabilization that Don Giovanni effects in her isn’t that she loves him, but that she begins to wonder if she loves Don Ottavio. Don Giovanni removes her entire paternal structure, he kills her father and disrupts the relationship with Don Ottavio, who says that he’d take her father’s place.

The challenge that the character of Don Giovanni poses for production is comparable with pieces like Lulu or Salome. The characters there aren’t abstractions, they’re flesh and blood. But they’re dealing with death and eroticism, which makes it so complicated.

Everyone looking at the character will have a completely different subjective relationship to this Don Giovanni, this Lulu or this Salome, will be attracted or repelled, will think, I’d like to have him, or I’d like to be him. Eroticism is the hardest thing on the stage. That’s why I always tell Kyle Ketelsen, our première Don Giovanni, don’t try to be sexy. And that’s why I stage “La ci darem la mano”, for example, without Don Giovanni and Zerlina touching.

If it’s just physical seduction, then it’s minimal and boring. When Don Giovanni says it’s always about love for him, this means something completely different. ns “È tutto amore”, it’s all love, is what Don Giovanni says at the start of Act 2 to Leporello, who’s accusing him of cheating on all women. Sometimes this scene was staged in the past as if Don Giovanni was mocking women.

This seems not entirely incom­

prehensible, given Don Giovan­ ni’s logic that it would be chea­ ting on the other women if he limited himself to one. How do you interpret this “love”? bk He makes several of his core statements to Leporello – “È tutto amore.” Women are more important to me than food and the air I breathe.

More important than oxygen. This has nothing to do with joking, he’s totally serious – I would do anything for love.

But he’s not talking about romantic love. We’re caught up in this idea of love in the 19th century and its normalisation in the capitalist 20th century. We know from Shakespeare how ambivalent love can be, and this goes far beyond what we see in Romeo and Juliet, although this love is also very complicated and contradictory. Don Giovanni has two arias, the Dionysian national anthem, and the serenade, his canzonetta “Deh vieni alla finestra”.

He allegedly is singing this for Donna Alvira’s chambermaid, but I think it’s an aria to his mirror. If you don’t listen to me, I’ll die – he’s singing it to himself. Mozart does this incredibly, the aria is in D major, but it still sounds sad. I think that through the pizzicato of the mandolin we’re hearing Don Giovanni’s true voice for the first and only time. ns Do you make a connection here between the audience and Don Giovanni’s “true voice”? bk No. The question as to whether we like Don Giovanni or not is irrelevant. It’s like Dionysus again, he’s neither friend nor foe. He just is. Let’s take Euripides’ Bacchae, the most fa­­­mous stage representation of Dionysus.

There we see how Pentheus is torn apart by the women Dionysus has dri­

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ven to frenzy. His mother Agave is one of them. There’s no point in looking at this and saying, “Dionysus. Cool guy,” or “I think that’s wrong.” You can only see it and ask, “What is that?” And it’s just the same with Don Giovanni. You don’t point out the problems to the audience, you confuse them. I’d like to say something about the current debate about pieces like Don Giovanni. I think when we ask, “Can we still perform such works?”, that is nonsense.

It’s intellectual laziness. I think characters like Don Giovanni are like a mirror we see ourselves in – sometimes like distorting mirrors, sometimes like broken mirrors. Sometimes the image we see isn’t exactly appealing. But I think that an interpretation where we see Don Giovanni simply as a Harvey Weinstein character doesn’t get us any­ where. We don’t get to grips with the opera in this way, it’s not the story and it’s not the music. If we want to look at the story and music of Don Giovanni, we need to do something that art in our society should pay particular attention to. And that’s showing the irrational, the unconscious, the contradictory in what makes us human. The relationship with the dark and problematic side has always been explored in art.

In the world, on the street there’s a legal system that has to approach these things differently – but this isn’t the world we’re in here. We’re not just in

a world of fantasy, we’re in a world of dream, symbol, the unconscious. Theatre is a safe space to the extent that you can explore everything that’s not possible in the real world. Naturally, a director must be aware of what Don Giovanni is, it’s important that we see a lot of different approaches, and I also think it’s important that the piece has been more frequently directed by women in recent years. But we also absolutely have to deal with this huge part of human existence. It’s the same with humour and comedy. Sometimes it’s brutal, very controversial, and we know from Freud and also Greek drama how important it is to enter into these controversies. ns Does that mean your production approaches controversy from within the piece? bk Yes. Like all great theatrical works, Don Giovanni is a laboratory for contradictory ideas about human existence without final answers. And at the end I leave the theatre, walk out onto the street, and start thinking about my life – because I’ve had this experience.

I don’t go out and think, “Ah yes, that’s how it is.” I start to think. How was the music? How were those scenes? How was this element or that in the piece on the stage? How did everything affect me, what do I think now? I think this is the function of theatre.

KYLE KETELSEN as DON GIOVANNI

PHILIPPE SLY as LEPORELLO KATE LINDSEY as DONNA ELVIRA Following pages: PATRICIA NOLZ as ZERLINA

KATE LINDSEY as DONNA ELVIRA PETER KELLNER as MASETTO

PHILIPPE SLY as LEPORELLO HANNA-ELISABETH MÜLLER as DONNA ANNA STANISLAS DE BARBEYRAC as DON OTTAVIO

OVID

PENTHEUS AND BACCHUS FROM THE METAMORPHOSES The soothsayer had a very great name. But the one to mock him was Echion’s son Pentheus, the one to deride the gods. He mocks the prophetic words of the old one, and makes his painful loss of sight an accusation against him. Tiresias, however, shakes his grey head and strikes back.

“How happy you would be if these dispossessed orbs were yours, so as not to see the sacred rites of Bacchus!

Now the day approaches, and I see it is not far off, when the new god, Bacchus, son of Semele will come.

Unless you think him worthy to be honoured in your sanctuaries, you will be scattered, torn, in a thousand pieces, and stain your mother and her sisters and the woods themselves with your blood.

It will happen, because you will not think the god worthy of being honoured. You will complain that in my darkness I have seen too far.” Even as he speaks, Echion’s son thrusts him away.

The truth of his words follows, the oracles of the seer are fulfilled. Bacchus has come, and the fields echo with cries of celebration, the crowd runs to them, men, mothers and daughters-in-law, high and low, all rushing to the new mysteries. Pentheus shouts “What madness has stupefied your minds, children of the serpent, people of Mars?” “Can the clash of brazen cymbals, pipes of curved horn, and magical tricks be so powerful? Can men, who were not terrified by drawn swords or blaring trumpets or armies with sharp weapons be overcome by women’s voices, men mad with wine, crowds of obscenities, and empty drumming?

Should I admire you old ones more? After long sea voyages, have you established a new Tyros, a sanctuary for ref-

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AND BACCHUS

ugees, and now allow yourself to be conquered without resistance? Or should I admire you young men more, who are better suited to war and closer to my age? You are better suited to bear arms rather than thyrsus staves, a helmet rather than garlands. Remember your origins, and the courage of the serpent who was alone but killed so many. She died for her spring and lake, you should conquer for your honour!

She has killed the bold, now drive out the weaklings and win your deserved glory! If Thebes has not deserved a long history, let it be at least weapons and men who destroy our walls!

Let us hear the sound of clashing blades and crackle of fire!

Then we would be sad but blameless, people could lament our fate and not hide it, and we would not need to be ashamed of our tears. Now, however, Thebes will be conquered by an unarmed boy who does not boast of war, bears no spear, rides no horse, but is adorned by hair dripping with myrrh, womanly garlands, purple and gold woven into bright robes. I will – stay back! – force him to admit that he has claimed a false father and invented his mysteries. When Acrisius had courage enough to defy a false god, and shut the gates of Argos at his coming, should Pentheus and the rest of Thebes be terrified of his arrival?”

Echion’s son remains stubborn. He no longer sends others, but goes himself to where Cithaeron, chosen as the place of celebration of the mysteries, resounds with the songs and voices of the Maenads. As a fiery steed snorts and longs to join the battle when the herald has given the signal with the sounding brass, Pentheus was roused by the drawn-out cries shaking the air, and his rage was rekindled on hearing them. About halfway up the mountain, surrounded by forest, there was a field bare of trees, visible from all sides.

Here, Pentheus sees the mysteries with profane sight. The first to see him in this is his mother. She is the first to fall on him, driven by madness, the first to wound him with her thyrsus, calling, “You two sisters, come here! I need to slay the boar that has been rampaging through our fields.” The maddened mob fall on the solitary man. They close ranks and follow the terrified fellow. Now he is afraid, now his words are less violent, blaming himself, acknowledging that he has sinned. He was wounded, but still cried out, “Help

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AND BACCHUS

me, Autonoe, sister of my mother! Let Acteon’s shade soften your wrath!” But she no longer remembers Acteon, and rips off the supplicant‘s right arm, while Ino violently tears off the other arm.

The wretched man has no arms to reach out to his mother, but he shows her his wounds, bereft of the limbs lying on the ground. “Mother, look at me!” At the sight, Agave howled, threw back her head and let her hair flow in the wind. Clutching his severed head with bloody fingers, she calls, “Hurray, my comrades, I’ve succeeded in the task!” No wind ever tore the leaves faster from the tall tree, bitten by the winter frost, barely clinging to the branches. This was how quickly the man’s limbs were torn away by the frenzied hands.

With this fearful example before their eyes, the women of Ismenus eagerly attend the new mysteries, offering incense at holy altars.

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STANISLAS DE BARBEYRAC as DON OTTAVIO KATE LINDSEY as DONNA ELVIRA

PHILIPPE JORDAN

DON GIOVANNI HAS BROUGHT THEM ALL DOWN WITH HIM The three operas in the Da PonteMozart cycle set the bar for everything, they are the starting point and foundation stone of our work in opera, our artistic efforts in music theatre. I would go even further. A revision of these masterpieces, and particularly of Don Giovanni, which we are beginning our current journey with, may even have the potential to influence the entire re­ pertoire and imbue it with inspiration.

The Mozart-Da Ponte cycle is based on a truth which can emerge untouched, despite all the intellectual and social movements and narratives of the prevailing time or era.

Not least because the emotions in Mozart speak to us pure, direct and undistorted. The only important thing is that an interpreter must take the time to return to basics repeatedly, which means reading the libretto and the musical text exactly (in the process avoi­ding all forms of manneristic distortion). Even so, there is undoubtedly a very wide range of interpretations where Mozart’s work is concerned.

The experience from the fertile clashes between the so-called traditional and the historically enlightened style of performance gives legitimacy to many different approaches in this

respect. The important and at the same time challenging thing is accordingly to find a common denominator, a common language with the artists involved, who come from all over the world and possibly very different schools and approaches. How to deal with the text, for example, and the recitatives? Limiting yourself to a beautiful sound is definitely too little, for me. As such, I see the new Wiener Staatsoper production of the entire Mozart-Da Ponte cycle as a welcome opportunity to offer corresponding artistic answers.

BREAKING THE BOUNDARIES Within the cycle, Don Giovanni has a very special place in terms of the history of its perception at the Wiener Staats­oper. As we know, the house was opened with this piece in 1869, the legendary and very significant artistic realisation by Gustav Mahler and Alfred Roller (1905) had more impact worldwide than almost any other production in terms of its style and revolutionary nature.

Don Giovanni also played a prominent role in the celebrations attending the reopening of the house in 1955. In

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addition, a wide range of great figures in music, literature and philosophy worldwide have repeatedly displayed great admiration for the work. This is not surprising, since Mozart crossed boundaries with Don Giovanni which he had still avoided in Le nozze di Figaro.

He is already showing the way here for Verdi and Wagner, not only setting a pinnacle for his time but influencing what was to come. The Magic Flute, Fidelio, Freischütz, Don Carlo, Der Flie­ gende Holländer, Der Ring des Nibelun­ gen – all are the consequences of Don Giovanni.

If you study the Don Giovanni score, there are constant surprises in both detail and overall aspects. How skilfully everything is constructed and related!

The disposition of the keys, the ideal sequence of parts driving the action and necessary calm sections is reminiscent of the Golden Ratio in architecture. And how subtly Mozart creates a dramatic musical arc by using the same diminished seventh chord when the Commendatore receives his death blow in Act 1 as the one in Act 2 when he appears as a stone statue.

Again, the fact that Leporello uses the same melody in his defence aria in Act 2 as Donna Anna and Zerlina had sung in alternation in the previous sextet is as brilliant as the original fact that Don Giovanni sang the melody in the trio at the start of Act 2 which we hear in the following serenade. The same music, but so differently coloured and orchestrated, as it’s aimed at different people! Or when Mozart has Don Giovanni keep singing his “Signorina” over the last orchestra chord at the end of the first Donna Elvira aria, so that he emerges from the instrumental cover and must accordingly be “seen” by

Donna Elvira. This is the extremely creative musical description of action on the stage.

TRANSITIONS AS CONNECTIONS Another major theme is how Mozart experiments with transitions between individual and self-contained sections.

He tries to overcome formal stereotypes, and in the process promoted a development which accelerated the way to through-composed operas.

There is admittedly a hint of this in Die Entführung aus dem Serail, where the overture also flows seamlessly into the first scene, and reaches an initial climax in the extended chain finales in Le nozze di Figaro. In Don Giovanni this idea is taken further – not only do the finales follow the same pattern as in Figaro, but longer sections are also consolidated even more clearly.

This is evident from the start, when the first scene develops from the overture, where Leporello introduces himself to the audience by remarking that what he wants most is to get away from there. Suddenly, this pure buffo situation is interrupted by the dramatic dispute between Donna Anna and Don Giovanni, which again takes a different turn with the intervention of the Commendatore.

His death is by no means the end of it, as it is followed directly by two secco recitatives, followed abruptly by an accompanied recitative which then develops into a duet. We accordingly see immensely different things happening without interruption during a period of five minutes, where a comic opening unexpectedly turns into a terrible situation. We find similar examples later.

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PHILIPPE JORDAN

The famous Don Giovanni-Zerlina duet “La ci darem la mano” (“There we will join our hands”) also develops organically from a recitative, like Leporello’s “catalogue aria” before it.

And the same applies as in Figaro – Act 1 overall shows an incredible crescendo and accelerando. Having absorbed this, these days I clearly conduct a Figaro or Don Giovanni faster on average than at the start of my career.

STRATEGIC DANCES AND MUSICAL QUOTES Another theatrical master stroke is the use of three different orchestras in Don Giovanni’s festival in Act 1, which play three rhythmically different dances at the same time. This is not a random compositional coup by Mozart! Don Giovanni is trying to get Zerlina away from her fellows in order to attack her undisturbed.

He plans this most strategically in what is known as the “champagne aria”, by naming three dances which have to be played “completely without any order” so that he can extend his list of conquests in the confusion.

A minuet for the three masques, a follia (actually a contradance which Don Giovanni uses to abduct Zerlina) and an allemande, in which Leporello tries to distract Masetto and block his way to Zerlina. And this is what happens in the festival. We can be sure that Mozart enjoyed writing something like this.

Mozart and Da Ponte must have enjoyed even more the three musical quotes at the feast in Act 2. Played one after the other, like a hit parade, they are familiar motifs or extracts from three operas which were popular at the time Don Giovanni was created. Mozart

quotes the aria “Come un agnello” from Giuseppe Sarti’s dramma giocoso Fra i due litiganti il terzo gode, the ensemble “quanto un sì bel giubilo” from Vincente Martin y Soler’s dramma giocoso Una cosa rara, and “Non più andrai” from his own Figaro.

Leporello mentions the title of the quoted operas in the first two instances, but the Figaro aria clearly outranks the other melodies in popularity (or so Mozart and Da Ponte imply) to the point where it is too well-known (“Questo poi la conosco per troppo”) so its origin need not be spelled out.

CHARACTER AND SUBTEXT With reference to Le nozze di Figaro, there is an actual connection in terms of keys between the first Mozart-Da Ponte opera and Don Giovanni. The central key for the notorious philanderer is D major, which is modulated to D minor in the nocturnal passage. D major conveys cheerfulness, brilliance, and also male aggressiveness. Understandably, Mozart assigned D major to both Don Giovanni and Count Almaviva.

There is a clear and deliberate pa­ rallel here, describing the personality through the use of the key. The D major and D minor in the Don Giovanni overture also indicates the picture of the protagonist from the start. Naturally, the dramatic opening anticipates the Commendatore scene in Act 2, but as the Commendatore is to some extent part of Don Giovanni, the playful element is accompanied by showing the dark side of this divided personality.

It is clear that Don Giovanni is a comedy by its nature – although a dark one with a great downfall. Night mu-

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sic, if you will, where the comic aspect is always present, but the shadows and abysses are equally influential. Admittedly, the protagonist’s music is not inherently comical – which is not the case for Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi or Verdi’s Falstaff. For Don Giovanni, the comical, sarcastic, and humorous aspect is present in the subtext, the equivocal ambiguity of the superb Da Ponte libretto, and not least in the brilliant handling of the secco recitatives.

Don Giovanni only adopts the buffo musical style when he is disguised as Leporello, but there, too it is his choice of words and eloquence that is really amusing. Generally, Don Giovanni – and this is part of his success – is a musical chameleon as well, adapting to his partner of the moment, like a magnet attracting and using everyone else. He has a different music for Zerlina than for the maid, a different one for Donna Anna than for Donna Elvira.

I occasionally encounter in this connection the interesting idea that Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Verdi’s Falstaff could be equivalent characters, where the former is the younger alter ego of the latter. But I don’t agree with that, because for all his intrigues Falstaff is a Romantic who writes letters, falls in love and ultimately acknowledges his own errors. Don Giovanni by contrast gets his energy at the expense of others, and obviously enjoys being destructive. The happiness and youth of the wedding couple Masetto and Zerlina, for example, attract him. He wants to share in it, and at the same time delibe­ rately destroy everything.

And when Le­ porello learns in the ceme­ tery scene that Don Giovanni may have seduced his wife, the evil enjoyment of the protagonist knows no

boundaries in the face of the horrified despair of his servant.

Finally, there is one aspect which needs to be clarified first for every new production of Don Giovanni – the question of which version. I am sure that I would prefer the Prague world première version for any production in a stagione house or festival which is restricted to a few performances – this is, after all, the original. But in a repertoire house like the Wiener Staatsoper you can’t do without the two brilliant arias in the Vienna version – Don Ottavio’s “Dalla sua pace” and Donna Elvira’s “Mi tradì”.

The audience really expects them, and the tenor aria in particular provides a balancing moment of calm in the overall flow of the action which even makes you forget that the proportions of Act 2 are somewhat unbalanced by these insertions. I feel differently about the duet added for Vienna “Per queste tue manine” with Zerlina and Leporello. Dramaturgically, this little number is redundant, and would replace the better Leporello aria “Ah pietà, signori miei”, which I would be sorry to see.

By contrast, I would never have considered the omission of the last scene, which was formerly standard practice.

Naturally, there is a certain dramatic effect if the opera ends with Giovanni’s descent into hell, however you tell it.

But the subsequent D major epilogue is so important because it shows that Giovanni has ultimately not disappeared.

In the course of the plot as experienced by the audience he has seduced all those involved, adversely affected them, wounded them with his poison – and this has lasting consequences. I find it very suggestive that Mozart has modulated back to D major at the end in the orchestra. With this he symbol-

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ises to some extent that Don Giovanni has taken them all to hell with him.

The very rapid sotto voce “Questo è il fin di chi fa mal” (“This is what happens to evildoers”) in particular shows a merciless fundamentalism, that those left behind in the most literal sense of the word are not motivated by any particularly humane feeling, but have to live with the satisfaction of revenge.

Masetto and Zerlina have managed to find each other again, strengthened even in their relationship and matured by all that has happened – we see that at the latest in Zerlina’s tender “Vedrai

carino”. But all the others are definitively shattered. I don’t believe there is any viable future for Donna Anna and Don Ottavio, and the year of mourning that Donna Anna has demanded has little purpose.

Leporello, devastated by poison, is likely to succumb to alcoholism in various inns, and Donna Elvira, who remains perhaps the greatest victim of Don Giovanni, is still internally empty, whether in a convent or outside. And these visible, irreversible effects are shown in the final sextet as the conclusion of the story.

KYLE KETELSEN as DON GIOVANNI AIN ANGER as COMMENDATORE PHILIPPE SLY as LEPORELLO

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Following pages: PATRICIA NOLZ

as ZERLINA PETER KELLNER as MASETTO

NIKOLAUS STENITZER

THE CHEERINESS

OF THE DRAMA DON GIOVANNI, A COMEDY Dramma giocoso. This has been printed on the libretto and score of Don Giovanni since the Prague world première in 1787. A cheerful drama is a frequent translation of the genre, with a literal translation tending to “playful drama”.

What a “dramma giocoso” really is, and what this means for Don Giovanni has always been a matter of debate.

Occasionally, the form is still described as a blend, a comic opera with serious elements, a sort of tragicomedy. This view was based on the frequent use of the term by Carlo Goldoni and the widespread practice at the time of his libretti of incorporating serious roles (“parti serie”) in comic plots. This practice quickly became the standard, so that it was more a development within opera buffa. The fact that in the printed libretto of Mozart’s dramma giocoso La finta giardinera (world première 1775) the roles were categorised as “parti serie” and “parti buffe” fascinated Alfred Einstein in his

canonic Mozart biography (1945) as such a development.

The musicologist Arnold Jacobshagen, for example, sees the terzo genere (third type) of the opera semiseria which no longer reserved tragic bio­ graphies for aristocrats and frequently featured love between classes as being established later, in the Restoration period around 1815.

In connection with Mozart’s Don Gio­vanni, musicology has long pointed out that dramma giocoso and opera buffa were used synonymously in the 18th century, or that dramma was applied primarily to the libretto from which the opera was created.

It has authoritative backing for this.

In his catalogue of his works, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote on 28 October, 1787: Il dissoluto punito, o, il Don Giovanni, opera buffa in 2 Atti.

The description of the genre is clear – Mozart regarded his Don Giovanni as a comic opera.

Don Giovanni, the “opera of operas” as E. T. A. Hoffmann called it in his influ-

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THE CHEERINESS OF THE DRAMA

ential 1813 short story Don Juan, seems in any case to reject the profanity of this characterisation. The gloomy D minor of the overture, which returns after Leporello’s comic aria in the introduction, can be described as the basic tonality of the opera. It was rightly noted that this overture does not reflect the content of the opera musically, as Gluck required of an opera overture, still called sinfonia at the time. Mozart, by contrast, reflects the atmosphere of the piece brilliantly with the gloomy beginning and the feverish and euphoric transition from D minor to D major.

THE ROMANTIC DON GIOVANNI That Don Giovanni has so often been interpreted over the centuries with a clear emphasis on the darker moments is due to the influence of the Romantic approach. E.T.A. Hoffmann’s short story mentioned earlier is seen as particularly influential. There, a “travel­ ling music lover” encounters an interpreter of Donna Anna who is unable to resist Don Giovanni’s demonic eroticism any longer, even offstage, and ultimately succumbs to it. In his 1966 essay on Donna Anna and Don Giovanni, Walter Felsenstein very vividly imagined the scene where Donna Anna is captured by this magic (“at the same time as her terror, she is caught up in a monstrous feeling she has never felt before and can’t resist”), and he did so even though he actually wanted to show above all that nothing had happened between Don Giovanni and Donna Anna in the dark bedroom.

How­ever, Hoffmann’s short story is so important for the further treatment of Don Giovanni primarily because it de-

rives the inexplicability of the appeal of the “dissoluto” from a metaphysical conflict over the soul of the protagonist.

The “travelling music lover” describes Don Juan’s sexual or erotic restlessness as a blind alley, the result of a trap for him set directly by the devil. “In Don Juan’s mind the archfiend’s treachery had planted the idea that love, the enjoyment of women, would fulfil on earth what lives in the heart as just a promise of heaven, and is the infinite longing which directly links us with the celestial realm.” This is the source of the dark Romantic mood which has dominated the approach to Don Giovanni since the 19th century.

A further development of the Romantic interpretation is the practice emanating from Vienna of cutting the “lieto fine”, the comic ending to the opera which is characteristic of opera buffa and ending directly with Don Giovanni’s descent into hell. It was repeatedly suggested that Mozart himself had cut the last scene for the Viennese version (1788). A matching cut in the autograph score of the Vienna première was attributed for a long time to the revival by Franz Xaver Süssmayer (1798), but it ultimately seemed possible that the Vienna première was actually performed without the final text, which was added back in for later performances.

Gustav Mahler opted for the cut for his Viennese revival in 1905, and recent performances have occasionally ended directly with the descent into hell.

ANTAGONISM AND SIMILARITY The question of how to handle the final scene gets us back to the question of

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NIKOLAUS STENITZER

the nature of this dramma giocoso, or the cheeriness of the drama. If the opera ends with Don Giovanni’s descent into hell, the opera buffa which Mozart felt he had written loses one of its most important features in the “lieto fine”. The Romantic version which Dieter Borchmeyer analysed in his 2020 article Wirkung als Wider­ sacher des Werks (Effect as adversary of the work) succeeded at times in removing the work from its genre.

But just as the cryptic dark aspect of Don Giovanni is not an invention of the Romantic response, the comic elements are integral parts of the piece.

Given that both aspects are inter­ woven, it is worth looking at how the comedy in Don Giovanni works.

Formally, there are numerous elements which correspond to the genre of opera buffa – comic arias, comic figures, wordplay and rapid dialogue in the recitatives. The special feature, and perhaps what seems to remove Don Giovanni from the comic genre, are the frequent breaks in these elements which Johanna Wall has pointed out.

The dramaturge cites in this connection the abrupt end to the merry wedding dance of Zerlina and Masetto with Don Giovanni’s appearance, and the fact that the anticipated appearance of the “stone figure” at the start of the second finale has the comic number on Leporello’s gluttony integrated into it.

The motif of the greedy servant is just as much part of the comic repertory as the amusing antagonism of master and servant. Leporello’s “Notte e giorno faticar” (Slaving away, day and night) in the introduction is the standard complaint of the buffa servant about the rigours of their life, together

with the equally standard wish to be a “gentiluomo” – which should not be overlooked.

Leporello’s scenes generally provide comedy in the confrontation with Don Giovanni. For example, when he cautiously introduces an “affar importante” (an important matter) in Act 1 scene 4, which is ultimately only to tell his master that he’s leading a worthless life, the audience can count from his first words on laughing over Don Giovanni’s rage in response. In the wedding celebrations for Zerlina and Masetto, Leporello parodies Don Giovanni’s declarations to the couple and offers the peasant girls his “protezione”. This reveals his master’s deceitful arrogance and demonstrates his own peasant cunning.

However, the relationship between Don Giovanni and Leporello goes beyond comic antagonism and the dependence of master and servant. The two are linked by a complicity which can also be interpreted as the two faces of one and the same character. It is important that they share the same standards – the servant cannot be a moralist. Instead, Leporello advances the plot by his personal dialectic of warning and demanding. The director Joachim Herz noted back in 1985 that Leporello was not a man to “eliminate the difference in station, he just feels that he’s on the wrong level.”

In the context of the Romantic interpretation, a significantly closer tie between Don Giovanni and Leporello was proposed. Søren Kierkegaard, who establishes Don Giovanni as the third stage of musical eroticism in Either/Or (1843), describes an inseparable link.

“If, on the other hand, we continue to identify Don Giovanni as the life

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THE CHEERINESS OF THE DRAMA

of immediacy, we easily grasp how he can exercise a decisive influence upon Lepo­ rello, that the latter assimilates him so completely that he almost becomes one of Don Giovanni’s functioning parts. In a sense Leporello comes nearer to having a personal awareness than Don Giovanni, yet to do that he would have to be clear about his relation to the latter; but that he cannot manage, he is unable to break the spell. […] Even in Leporello’s relation to Don Giovanni there is something erotic, a power with which he is captivated against his will; but in this ambiguity he is musical, and Don Giovanni constantly reson­ates through him. […]”

“An ego and its spin-off” was how Otto Rank summed up the relationship between Leporello and Don Giovanni just under 80 years later. The comments by the student of Freud in his 1924 essay Don Juan are firmly based in psychoanalysis and accordingly in contrast to Kierkegaard’s philosophy of existence. Rank reminds us of Sigmund Freud’s observation that Shakespeare also frequently “breaks down characters into two individuals, both of whom appear to be incomplete until you reassemble them in a single unit.”

Seen this way, Leporello would be part of the Don Giovanni whole, and according to Rank Don Giovanni would be “impossible unless that part of Don Juan who represents the criticism, the fear and the conscience of the hero was spun off in Leporello.”

However, Rank’s analytical approach is not enough to capture Don Giovanni and Leporello. Don Giovanni would be “impossible” as a psychologically conceived character, but not as the Dionysian principle run rampant that Da Ponte and Mozart show. He does

not become psychologically consistent even with the addition of Leporello – the servant is too like his master. This similarity, its consequences and the failure of their identification are a front for other varieties of the very specific Don Giovanni comedy.

COMEDY AND HUMILIATION Leporello’s famous “catalogue aria” in Act 1 where he shows Donna Elvira how replaceable she is with the catalogue of Don Giovanni’s conquests, is a buffa aria by its nature. This is as obvious as mocking the victims is the moving spirit of the comedy. It will be repeated in a significantly harsher form in Act 2 scene 3 when Leporello disguised as Don Giovanni promises to Donna Elvira to be always faithful to her. Donna Elvira can hardly grasp that Don Giovanni is suddenly apparently ready to return to her, after all the disappointments and humiliations that he has subjected her to. In addressing her presumed loved one she tries to express her love and disappointments, remind Don Giovanni of his duty and finally get a promise of faithfulness from him. “So can I believe that my tears have conquered your heart? Does my beloved Don Giovanni repent and return to his duty and my love?” And Leporello replies, “Yes, my fair one.” His reply is a flat-out lie and at the same time a parody of his master’s flattery and a humiliation of Donna Elvira. Depending on the focus of the production, the audience can be amused at how Leporello parodies Don Giovanni, how he slowly grows into his role (“I like the entertainment”), and how he tries not to be recognised.

33

THE CHEERINESS OF THE DRAMA

In any case, the entertainment is at the expense of the victim. The Don Giovanni complex is a Don GiovanniLeporello complex which not least characterises the brutality inherent in the comic parts of the piece.

But Leporello’s character is not only comic in his carefree lack of empathy. When Otto Rank attributes to him “criticism, conscience and fear”, these are characteristics which are very important to the black comedy of Don Giovanni, whether spun off or not. Leporello is set up for a pratfall when he reproaches his master, complains, but then enjoys being like him when he participates in his intrigues.

His recurrent fear of punishment – by

his master, society, God – opens up further possibilities for the comedy of the ridiculous.

In a drama which poses existential questions, Leporello is the character who offers the comic contrast to the dark atmosphere, both through apparently “inappropriate” buffa moments and his own fear, which can make him appear ridiculous. He himself con­ tributes to the ambiguity of the “buffa” by displaying a brutal and ruthless humour in the interplay with a female character, Donna Elvira. Leporello is a vehicle in two ways for a comedy of the ridiculous whose technique is humiliation – once as the humiliated and once as the humiliator.

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PHILIPPE SLY as LEPORELLO

SERGIO MORABITO

TURNED UPSIDE DOWN OR WHAT HAPPENS IN THE

PENULTIMATE SCENE OF DON GIOVANNI ?

The Comedia famosa del Maestro Tirso de Molina ‘El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra’ has Don Juan consumed by the flames of hell. In this, the seduction of women and mockery of their honour admittedly plays a subordinate role – the attitude of the times saw such youthful sins as acceptable. It is his dismissal of penance, absolution and the omnipresence of death that leads to Don Juan’s damnation in this comedia by a theatre-loving monk of the Counter Reformation. The lunatic here is anything but an agnostic or atheist.

He relies simply on the protection of his powerful family, which saves him from earthly prosecution, and on his youth, which indefinitely postpones his death and subjection to heavenly justice. He asks the “stone visitor” in good Catholic terms, “Are you in Hell? […]

Are your sins leading you there?”

In the first two acts, Juan has dishonoured two noblewomen and two peasant women before our eyes. He has deceived the two noblewomen of his identity by disguising himself under cover of darkness, and seduced the fisherwoman and peasant woman by compliments and promises. He has fled from all his obligations.

This fails when Juan and his servant Catalinón find the grave of Don Gonzalo de Ulloa in Act 3 scene 8, the father of Doña Ana, killed in the duel in Act 2 scene 11.

Juan mocks the inscription on the gravestone:

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TURNED UPSIDE DOWN

“For the cursing and mockery suffered a nobleman here waits for revenge: may God punish the traitor.” by pulling the beard of the monument and inviting him to dinner:

[…] when it’s convenient for you to come to me, we can talk about revenge, if you’re determined to take it.

And he continues, “If you want to revenge your woe when I’m dead, you’d be sensible to forget your vengeance, it would take too long!

The final verse which ends the scene – “tan largo me lo fiáis” – is a recurring refrain in Juan’s mouth, which in the slightly modified form “¡qué largo me lo fiáis!” is actually sung in the following sequence (Act 3, scenes 1015) which includes the visit of the stone guest. When the initially silent statue answers his host’s question whether he would like to be entertained with song by nodding assent, the following song is sung backstage at Juan’s command: “ If for love and suffering You’re threatening me after my death with revenge, fairest one, bah, there’s plenty of time to wait.”

The statue only begins to speak (“quietly, like one departed”) after Juan followed its nod to clear the table, send Catalinón and the two other servants out and have them close the doors behind them. He obliges Juan with a handshake to follow his invitation to a dinner that he intends to set for Catalinón and him in his sepulchre. After his departure, where he refuses to be shown out with lights, because “mercy lights my way”, Juan blows off the fear of hell that the handshake has struck in him as his imagination, and decides to go to the sepulchre the next day “So that Seville can admire me, wondering at my defiance!”

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SERGIO MORABITO

There, the scene from the previous evening is repeated in a mirror image of a macabre wake. The statue has “two black-clad” serve adders, scorpions and claws, pour bile and vinegar. Catalinón again tries to escape from the imposed hospitality. The invisible singers are heard again, with an echo of Juan’s celebratory song: “Anyone who enjoys life should still never say defiantly Oh, there’s plenty of time for that!

There may not be time to repent.”

The Commendatore again seizes Juan’s hand. Juan feels that this time his end is near, and begs for time to receive absolution before his death. “Let me summon a confessor.” But Don Gonzalez says “This request comes too late.” The scoffer of Seville sinks to the ground, dead.

How did the two Enlightenment authors Mozart and Da Ponte respond to this 160 years later with their Il dissoluto punito ossia Il Don Giovanni? Superficially they followed the traditional material with the hero’s descent into hell, accompanied by fire and earthquakes (“foco da diversi parti, tremuoto etc” in the stage directions). At the same time, the showdown takes place under subversively reversed conditions. Da Ponte has reintroduced the dimension of time, which is not present in Bertati’s libretto together with the associated confession (the immediate source of Da Ponte’s libretto). The word “tempo” appears three times in the opera’s penultimate scene (Act 2, scene 15).

Astonishingly, the lack of time is no longer attributed to the repentant sinner but to the Commendatore, who says of himself, “Parlo, ascolta, più tempo non ho,” (which Mozart has him repeat – “I’m telling you, hear me, I have no more time”). The Commendatore issues the invitation which he has obliged Don Giovanni to accept by his own appearance here. Leporello tries to excuse his master for the lack of time (“Tempo no ha, scusate” – “He has no time, forgive him”) – Don Giovanni on the other hand reinforces his acceptance with the demanded handshake. The Commendatore’s handshake makes Don Giovanni cry out, feeling the icy grip. But he is not the one to beg for an opportunity to confess. It is the Commenda-

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TURNED UPSIDE DOWN

tore who tries to compel with physical force. “Pentiti, cangi vita: è l’ultimo momento” – “Repent, change your life, This is the last chance.” Don Giovanni rejects the Commendatore’s offer four times (“Pentiti!”, “Repent”), the last time is final. His intellectual defiance is solid and unconquered despite the torture.

At which the Commendatore has to admit his defeat: “Ah tempo più non v’è” (“There’s no more time”). It is not clear whose last moment is involved. Given that the word “tempo” is introduced by the Commendatore, it can only be his time that is meant, which has run out – the time of orthodoxy, the time of a religion trying to weaponize the fear of death to subject the individual to its power. Although Don Giovanni van­ ishes in the flames, he triumphs musically at the end of the scene in the key of D major, not the Commendatore’s D minor.

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KYLE KETELSEN as DON GIOVANNI

IMPRINT WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

DON GIOVANNI SEASON 2023/24 PREMIÈRE OF THE PRODUCTION DECEMBER 5 2021 Publisher WIENER STAATSOPER GMBH, Opernring 2, 1010 Wien Director DR. BOGDAN ROŠČIĆ Music Director PHILIPPE JORDAN Administrative Director DR. PETRA BOHUSLAV General Editors SERGIO MORABITO, NIKOLAUS STENITZER Design & concept EXEX Layout & typesetting MIWA MEUSBURGER Image concept MARTIN CONRADS, BERLIN (Cover) All performance photos MICHAEL PÖHN Printed by PRINT ALLIANCE HAV PRODUKTIONS GMBH, BAD VÖSLAU TEXT REFERENCES All texts were taken from the première programme of the Vienna State Opera 2021. All articles - with exception of the excerpt from Ovid's Metamorphoses - were original contributions for this programme. IMAGES: Cover image: Robert Voit, Mono Lake, California, USA 2006, courtesy Galerie Peter Sillem. ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS Andrew Smith, except: Ovid: Pentheus & Bacchus, from: Id. Metamorphoses, translated from the Latin by David Raeburn © Penguin Classics, 2004 Reproduction only with approval of Wiener Staatsoper GmbH / Dramaturgy. Abbreviations are not marked. Holders of rights who were unavailable are requested to make contact regarding retrospect compensation.

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