Synopsis Act One Act Two Leporello complains of his servitude to his Leporello, pursued by Giovanni, accepts more master, Don Giovanni. Donna Anna pursues money to continue serving him. Giovanni plans Giovanni, whose identity is unclear to her. to seduce Elvira’s chambermaid. Arriving at Anna’s father, the powerful Commendatore, her window, they nd Elvira instead. Inspired, arrives to protect her, and is killed by Giovanni. Giovanni forces Leporello to trade clothes with Leporello and Giovanni escape. Don Ottavio, him and seduce her. Desiring Giovanni, Elvira Anna’s ancé, pledges to nd her father’s killer. goes o with Leporello, believing him to be his Leporello and Giovanni encounter Donna master, while Giovanni courts her maid. Masetto Elvira, whom Giovanni had married and then appears, armed and looking for Don Giovanni. abandoned. Leporello distracts her with a song Giovanni, playing Leporello, eggs Masetto on, about the catalogue he keeps of his master’s then attacks him savagely and departs. Zerlina victims, allowing Giovanni to escape. comforts her beaten spouse. e peasants Zerlina and Masetto prepare Leporello and Elvira are happened upon by for their wedding. Giovanni interrupts them. Ottavio, Anna, Zerlina, and Masetto. All believe Zerlina, enthralled with Giovanni, sends Masetto they have caught the villainous Don Giovanni. o with Leporello, consenting to stay alone Leporello reveals his true identity, to Elvira’s with Giovanni. Elvira enters and breaks up the embarrassment. He escapes in the confusion. seduction. Ottavio and Anna arrive in mourning. Ottavio pledges to hold Giovanni accountable Anna, not recognizing Giovanni as her assailant, for the murder of Anna’s father, while Elvira asks for his assistance in nding her father’s is ambivalent, caught between hatred and desire. murderer. Elvira bursts in, denouncing Giovanni. Leporello and Giovanni banter, ignorant He shames her as crazy, and carries her o. Anna of the Commendatore’s monument nearby. suddenly recognizes Giovanni, and relates the e voice of the dead patriarch interrupts them. memory of her traumatic night to Ottavio. Leporello is forced by his audacious master to Masetto, humiliated, reprimands Zerlina invite the Commendatore to dinner. He accepts. for abandoning him, while she prompts him Later, Ottavio proposes that Anna set to trust her more. Giovanni interrupts, luring a wedding date, but she retreats into grief them to a party he is hosting. Anna, Ottavio, and fantasy. and Elvira, all masked, have banded together Leporello prepares for the dinner to to ambush Giovanni. Leporello, not recognizing which the Commendatore has been invited. the three, invites them to the festivities. ere, Elvira interrupts, begging Giovanni to repent. amid the confusion of music and dancing, Giovanni rejects her, feasting voraciously. e Giovanni assaults Zerlina, is caught, accuses ghost knocks, and is welcomed. Declining the Leporello, and escapes capture and food of the living, he invites Giovanni to join punishment again. him for a heavenly meal. e dead man draws Giovanni toward punishment in the eternal re. Leporello recounts his master’s end to the remaining characters, and all imagine the lives they may now lead.

22 Curtis Opera Theatre Program Notes By Peter Burwasser

No great city embraced Mozart’s genius with more MOZART & DA PONTE, LLC fervor than Prague. e operatic masterpiece Le Don Giovanni is the second of Mozart’s three nozze de Figaro was received with mixed results masterful collaborations with librettist Lorenzo by the nicky Viennese public at its premiere Da Ponte. “The Mozart/Da Ponte operas changed in the spring of 1786, but audiences in Prague, opera buffa,” wrote critic Joan Acocella in the from all accounts, universally adored the work New Yorker . In Le nozze di Figaro , Don Giovanni , when it was heard in their city later that same and Così fan tutte , “the characters grew more year. Several years later, at the time of Mozart’s complicated, the transactions between them serious and poignant as well as funny. Comedy death, Vienna, notoriously, interred Mozart became tragicomedy.” in an unmarked grave in a ceremony attended by a paltry handful, while Prague hosted a memorial performance of the Requiem attended by thousands. Mozart and his family could have lived as Of course, Mozart was anything but a cherished celebrities in Prague if they so chose, passive participant in this collaboration. e but for political and professional reasons, not synergism of Da Ponte’s concise drama and to mention some degree of snobbery, Mozart naturalistic humanism and Mozart’s innate remained in Vienna, the music capital of Europe. theatricality and dazzling technique produced Yet he visited Prague often, and there experienced three of the most sublime operas of all time. one of the great triumphs of his career: the (e duo went on to create one more master commissioning and premiere of Don Giovanni , piece, Così fan tutte ). his second collaboration with the Venetian poet Of the three Da Ponte operas, Don Giovanni Lorenzo Da Ponte. is the most dicult to label, in a theatrical sense. e Don Juan legend—the basis for Don It opens with a ght in which one of the story’s Giovanni —had strong roots in Prague. Casanova protagonists is killed, and ends with the title himself, a reallife Don Juan, lived there at the character’s descent into hell. Yet it also includes end of his life. (In a bit of unsubstantiated but one of the most ingenious examples of musical persistent lore, Casanova and Mozart are thought comedy ever conceived, the great “Catalogue to have met while the opera was being written Aria” sung by Giovanni’s servant Leporello. in 1787.) e Prague National eater asked Mozart himself placed Don Giovanni in for the new opera, and as was the case for Figaro , his list of works as an opera bua . It may have Da Ponte took the lead in selecting the plot line been a useful place marker for him, but this and source material for the story line. Amazingly, mighty work is too complex to be placed in he was simultaneously working on three librettos any dramatic pigeonhole. Mozart intuitively (under strict deadlines)—the new one for understood that tragedy and comedy are two Mozart, as well as works for Antonio Salieri sides of the same coin. and Antonio Soler. “I loved and esteemed all three of them,” he wrote in his memoirs.

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