page_title: Don Giovanni
section_title: Modern responses to the opera
hierarchical_section_title: Don Giovanni / Modern responses to the opera
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Das Champagnerlied oder „Der Weiße Andrade“ (Der Sänger Francisco d'Andrade als Don Giovanni in Mozarts Oper) English: One of three paintings by Slevogt that portrayed Francisco D'Andrade in the title role of Mozart's Don Giovanni. The painting depicts the "Champagne Aria" scene (Fin ch'han dal vino).
context_page_description: Don Giovanni is an Italian opera in two acts. It is about the character better known as Don Juan. The music was written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The libretto was written by Lorenzo da Ponte. The opera was first performed at the National Theatre in Prague on 29 October 1787. It was a great success.
  Don Giovanni is about a libertine and murderer who refuses to repent when given the chance. He is taken alive to Hell. The story was originally a folktale. Plays, operas, and even a ballet were produced on the theme by the time Mozart and da Ponte started work on their opera.
  Don Giovanni was performed across Europe after its success in Prague. It was performed in the United States in 1826, staged by da Ponte himself. In 1979, Joseph Losey made a movie of the opera. In 2013, Don Giovanni was tenth on the Operabase list of the most-performed operas in the world.
context_section_description: The Earl of Harewood writes: "Don Giovanni is too full of arias, many of them famous, for its own dramatic good. Perhaps it is a problem with most eighteenth-century opera. Singers demanded them, the public expected them; and of course the aria ... is a potent operatic weapon, the moment for the composer to comment in depth on the drama he has set going. But ... arias hold up the action in a way it is sometimes hard to defend, because you feel it was the singer who wanted it so."
  He points to Ottavio's "Il mio tesoro", his "Dalla sua pace", and Anna's "Non mi dir" as each being a "magnificent opportunity for singer", but wonders how much they actually contribute to the drama. But Zerlina's "Batti, batti" and Anna's "Or sai chi l'onore" are quite different. These arias contribute to the drama and move it forward.
  Nicholas Kenyon writes: "The power Don Giovanni unleashes is almost too great; if it is an uneven work then it is only imperfect in the way that King Lear is imperfect, from an excess of feeling. As Abert summarized it, in spite of the finale, 'the point of the opera is not to proclaim a universal moral, but to depict the decisive battle between two tremendous forces.
  "We sense the ultimate connection between even the most restless, passion-ridden human existence and the whole universe.' Like Figaro, Giovanni has held the stage from its premiere through to the present; it has fitted the nineteenth-century's wish for a Romantic, powerful Mozart and the twentieth-century's for a politicised, critical Mozart".
caption: Don Giovanni by Max Slevogt, 1902
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