Don Giovanni: Hero or villain?

by Petar PLAMENOV

 8 November (Tuesday), 2011 19.00 
Don Giovanni by W. A. Mozart 
Opera in two acts 

Conductor-Krassimira Kostova
Stage director-Alexander Tekeliev

CAST
Don Giovanni-Aleksander Krunev
Leporello-Delyan Slavov (guest)
Donna Anna-Edelina Kaneva (guest)
Don Ottavio-Georgi Sultanov
Donna Elvira -Shmilena Sultanova
Masetto-Petar Tiholov
Zerlina-Milena Minkova
Il Commendatore-Tosho Gerdjikov

Don Giovanni is known as the “opera of all operas”. The premiere was in Prague that the musical genius W.A. Mozart completed the work, and it was at the Estates Theatre that he conducted the premier in 1787. The libretto of "Don Giovanni" was adapted by Lorenzo da Ponte (a talented Jew who had the whim of passing for a priest) from a Spanish tale already used by Moliere. While marked by many and varied phases of human passion, it is not very dramatically coherent. But the individual characters stand out well, and the supernatural part of the story is very skilfully managed. Is it interesting that  Mozart’s Don Giovanni, is  retelling of the Don Juan legend is a study in contrasts, light vs. dark and pure vs. evil. The title character lives large, trampling every female he can find, knowing full well his fate is sealed. He seems to welcome his descent, as if it’s a fair price to pay for a immoral life.



The character of  Don Giovanni in Mozart’s opera personifies two contrasting aspects of the Enlightment. The first:the embodiment of liberty. Don Giovanni sees himself as exempt from the laws of state, society, culture and religion. In this sense he is the Enlightenment hero, an extreme example of the idea of liberty that marks the age. And the second: the embodiment of social disruption. Here he is the destroyer of liberty in others. His moral liscentiousness leads him to ignore oaths and promises, break up relationships and marriages and disrupt the distinctions in status that hold society together.  The conflict between these complementary and contrasting aspects of Don Giovanni is what drives the drama.



Another element of Giovanni’s character which enhances the idea of his heroic status is his complete lack of fear. He displays a super-human courage in the two key climaxes of the work: The Act 1 finale, where the five characters threaten him with the vengeance of heaven and he replies ‘My courage shall not fail me, though the powers of hell assail me.’ The finale of Act 2, where he says ‘no man shall call me coward’ and refuses to repent and change his life even in the face of everlasting suffering. It is worth bearing in mind that in the final scenes of the opera Giovanni’s fate is not sealed, and that he is offered the chance to repent and go to heaven rather than hell. His steadfast refusal here is almost Nietzschian in its conception of invididuality, and in his refusal to compromise the full realisation of his own nature.



One is forced to admire Giovanni here, as Nicholas Till says: "With his desperate, defiant denial he becomes a triumphant yea-sayer, prepared to plead his values of individual freedom at the bar of heaven itself". In this moment, as the scene is written by Mozart, it is almost impossible not to identify with Don Giovanni and adopt him as some sort of existential rebel: a rebel whom Camus was to describe as ‘A man who says no: but whose refusal does not imply renunciation,’ and who prefers ‘the risk of death to a denial of the rights that he defends.’
 
But of course there is a dark side to Don Giovanni. He is a ‘harbinger of chaos’. His liscentiousness, his breaking of oaths and promises, his flouting of taste, convention and manners, and his dismissal of all social conventions threaten the fabric of society itself.

The main thing to remark about the music is the incomparable skill with which Mozart has displayed all the varied moods and situations arising out of the story. Every character stands out in the musical picture. As Pohl, his biographer, says, there is scarcely a feeling known to humanity which is not expressed in some one of the situations or characters, male and female. "Whether we regard the mixture of passions in its concerted music, the profound expression of melancholy, the variety of its situations, the beauty of its accompaniment, or the grandeur of its heightening and protracted scene of terror – the finale of the Second Act – ‘Don Giovanni’ stands alone in dramatic eminence.

Of all musical romances it is certainly the first." Every listener must be struck with the intensely expressive melodies in which the work abounds -- melodies such as "Batti, Batti," and "Vedrai Carino," and Leporello’s "Catalogue" aria. It is much to be regretted that the opera is not oftener heard. Perhaps its cast is too exacting for the modern manager, since it demands three great sopranos, a basso, and a powerful baritone.

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