Mozart wrote Don Giovanni for Prague in 1787. There
had been a local tradition in that city of operas and ballets dealing with the
subject of the legendary seducer. The text Mozart used was by Lorenzo da Ponte,
in it he had one of the best opera libretti of its era. The other two late
operas by Mozart to da Ponte’s texts were similarly excellent. These last three
operas alone keep Mozart supreme in the opera world.
Seeing as these operas
were produced for public showing, and were intended for the eventual discernment
of the nobility and officialdom in power, it is astonishing how many vexing
issues they raise about the social and cultural status quo of the times, and
they could almost be seen as supporting a critique of the prevailing class
structure. It is amazing that any objections were only sporadically mooted over
Mozart's revolutionary or, at least, liberal tendencies.
All three of the da Ponte
operas have, at their core, issues of master-servant relationships, and all
three plots transpire in a world of unquestioned privilege for the noble class
and the eventual abuses thus engendered.
Although Don Giovanni is almost by default
labeled a 'dramma giocoso', and Mozart designated it an 'Opera buffa', its
actual subject is, although Mozart refuses to take it seriously, the terminal
case study of the career of a depraved psychopath who lets nothing get in the
way of him and his pleasure. It is as if a serial killer like Paul Bernardo had
the power and untouchability of a noble, and the constant help of a personal
servant, and yet the whole discourse was set in a context of hi-jinx and comic obfuscation
of the basic tragic denouement of a sinner going inexorably to his perdition in
actual hellfire in the end.
Each subsequent scene of action
compounds our outrage. We watch as the Don's conniving, evasive manipulations
get him into ever more elaborate convulsions of intrigue and deception.
The whole action starts
with a murder, the killing of the Commendatore as he attempts to protect his
daughter from the Don's intrusion. This is almost thrown away, buried as it is
by subsequent trivial events of attempted seduction, and mistaken identity,
embarrassment and obfuscation.
By the way, all through
this opera the Don never 'gets his rocks off,' and this side issue, only
obliquely implied, has the Don become ever 'more horny,’ and reckless, as
events transpire—since the opera seems to preserve a unity of time—following
the action through one evening and night. It must have been difficult to
address such a risqué subject at that time, but we become acutely aware of the
immense, almost pathological, sex drive of someone who is constantly seducing
and manipulating every available woman within reach. Brigid Brophy thought that
the creation of Don Giovanni provided a sort of sexual catharsis for the
seemingly frequently 'hard up' young Mozart.
One of the constant side
themes of the opera is the mistreatment on several levels and ways by the Don
of his servant Leporello. Since most of the events are cast in a sort of
ironically jocund mood, we are only peripherally aware of the constant bullying
that Leporello undergoes at the hands of his master. Even in the last scene of
the banquet in the Don's palace where food seems to be everywhere, there is an
issue over
Leporello being forced to
serve the food while he must stay hungry. All the comic action of the opera has
the nasty underside of showing how unfair and abusive every part of the
servant's low status is.
There is special irony in
the second act where Leporello disguised as the Don, is made to suffer a
beating intended for his master, who always gets away unscathed and scot-free,
before the redress of the horrific final denouement, with the trombones in
baleful D minor, in which hell claims him.
Mozart had a thing about
servitude. One of the most dramatic, and undoubtedly humiliating incidents in
his life, was when he was thrown out of Prinz-Cardinal Colloredo's court for
his lack of deference. They made the point of actually having the valet kick
Mozart in the rear as he was physically thrown out the door. Yet Mozart had, by
this point, experienced the deference of most of the crowned heads of Europe
during his years of travel when he was shown off as a child virtuoso.
After this, Mozart was to
remain freelance for the rest of his short career, and he never went 'into
servitude' again. The distressing events we surmise but can scarcely make out
from the available evidence at the end of his life: his financial trouble,
possible gambling debts, exclusion from court, weakness, and terminal illness,
should not have been possible if he had been able to put up with some sort of
stable patronage. There were no social nets, no rights or protections in case
one fell on hard times in that society at the end of the 17th Century, so one
of the greatest geniuses of music got caught under the wheels of adverse
events, and we do not even know where his body was buried amongst the paupers. Even
the enormous success of Don Giovanni was not able to provide enough residual
income to protect Mozart during that final obscure period of
his life.
Michael Doleschell keeps mostly to non-fiction, and is
deeply devoted to music and culture and never tires of history, and is
fascinated by science and the scientific method [as long as they are well
explained]. He broadcasts a program of Classical Music for 3 hours every
Saturday afternoon from noon till 3 on the U of G's Radio Station: CFRU.
