Don Giovanni

The legendary Don Juan was destined for the operatic stage! One of Mozart’s genuine masterpieces, this work is revived in a special “film noir” staging which explores the dark side of love.

Don Giovanni is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte. It was premiered in the Estates Theatre in Prague on October 29, 1787.

Of the many operas based on the legend of Don Juan, Don Giovanni is thought to be beyond comparison. Da Ponte's libretto was billed like many of its time as dramma giocoso: "giocoso" meaning comic, and "dramma" signifying an operatic text (an abbreviation of "dramma per musica"). Mozart entered the work into his catalogue as an "opera buffa". Although often classified as comic, it is a unique blend of comic (buffa) and drama (seria). Subtitled "dramma giocoso", the opera blends comedy, melodrama and supernatural elements.

The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard wrote a long essay in his book Enten/Eller (Either/Or) in which he argues, quoting Charles Gounod, that Mozart's Don Giovanni is “a work without blemish, of uninterrupted perfection.” The finale, in which Don Giovanni refuses to repent, has been a captivating philosophical and artistic topic for many writers including George Bernard Shaw, who in Man and Superman parodied the opera (with explicit mention of the Mozart score for the finale scene between the Commendatore and Don Giovanni).

A screen adaptation of the opera was made under the title Don Giovanni in 1979, and was directed by Joseph Losey. Some of the great Don Giovannis on the opera stage have been the basses Ezio Pinza, Cesare Siepi and Norman Treigle, and the baritones Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Thomas Hampson and Thomas Allen.

As a staple of the standard operatic repertoire, it appears as number seven on Opera America's list of the 20 most-performed operas in North America.