Chapter Two Don Juan: Reflections on (Performing) Mozart’s Don Giovanni

Like Ritter Gluck, the tale Don Juan is one of twelve contributions that Hoffmann furnished to the AMZ on his own initiative. As the title suggests, one of Mozart’s most famous operas, rather than a composer as in Ritter Gluck, is central to the tale. To establish Don Juan’s relationship to Don Giovanni, it is important first to compare Hoffmann’s text to Lorenzo da Ponte’s libretto, and, since opera is a theatrical art form, to compare it with the performance practice and critical reception of Don Giovanni when the tale was first published. As with Ritter Gluck, Hoffmann draws from specific passages of Mozart’s score that are essential for the tale’s interpretation.

E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Don Juan and Lorenzo Da Ponte’s Don Giovanni

Hoffmann’s Don Juan opens with the arrival of a ‘traveling enthusiast’ at a hotel to spend the night. He soon discovers that there is a theater adjacent to his hotel room and that a performance of Mozart’s Don Giovanni (known as Don Juan in Germany) is about to begin. He immediately decides to attend the performance, and from his box he describes what is happening on stage. Disturbed by a noise behind him, he turns around and sees Donna Anna, who had been on stage just a moment earlier. They start a conversation in which she tells him about her role and the deeper meaning of Mozart’s opera. When the bell ending the intermission sounds, she leaves the box. During the second half of the tale, the enthusiast returns to the box and takes up the role of music critic. He sits at a small table with two candles, his writing utensils, and a glass of punch, and records his thoughts about the opera. According to the enthusiast, Don Giovanni’s rush from one woman to another is not only an act of sensual gratification but also a wanton affront to God and nature. Since his constant striving to attain higher insights is in vain, he feels a diabolical desire to destroy the happy lives of others. Yet the seduction of Donna Anna leads to Don Giovanni’s ruin. Her passion now turned to hatred, she seeks revenge against her seducer and the murderer of her father. Only Don Giovanni’s death can bring solace to her tortured soul. The differences between da Ponte’s libretto and Hoffmann’s short story are obvious enough: while the libretto defines Don Giovanni as a dramma 120 Hoffmann, Cosmopolitanism, and German Opera giocoso, little of this gaiety can be found in the tale’s account of the opera. When Hoffmann’s narrator describes the performance that he witnesses onstage, he skips the parts that are typical of comic opera, such as the burlesque beatings, role reversals, and serenade in the second act. Moreover, he grants Donna Elvira only scant attention; he clearly views Donna Anna as Don Giovanni’s main opponent. Da Ponte’s libretto neither mentions nor even suggests the actual seduction of Donna Anna by Don Giovanni; its only representation is her confession to her fiancé of his attempts to do so. The most unique feature of Hoffmann’s tale is also not found in the libretto: namely, the portrayal of Don Giovanni as a quasi-Faustian hero, who strives tirelessly towards a higher goal. The libretto simply calls him a ‘young and extremely licentious nobleman’. Ever since the publication of Hoffmann’s text, the differences between the tale and the libretto have inspired many critics, scholars, singers, conductors, and stage directors to formulate new interpretations of both the tale and the opera.1 In earlier scholarship, the interpretation of Mozart’s opera as described in the tale was usually believed to reflect Hoffmann’s own personal views.2 More recent contributions, however, distinguish Hoffmann from the textual narrator.3 While most critics agree that the tale, in its selective account of the events and other deviations from the libretto, offers a ‘misinterpretation’ of Mozart’s opera, recent analyses are careful to speak not of ‘Hoffmann’s misinterpretation’, but rather of a ‘misinterpretation’ consciously put into the mouth of the narrator. Hartmut Kaiser argued in 1975 that what mattered was not so much whether Hoffmann gave a faulty, inadequate, or ingenious interpretation of Mozart’s masterpiece, but rather how he used the work and what artistic goals he had

1 See, among others, Christof Bitter, Wandlungen in den Inszenierungsformen des ‘Don Giovanni’ von 1787 bis 1928. Zur Problematik des musikalischen Theaters in Deutschland (Regensburg: Bosse, 1961), pp.99-102; Hans Joachim Kreutzer, ‘Der Mozart der Dichter. Über Wechselwirkungen von Literatur und Musik im 19. Jahrhundert’, Mozart-Jahrbuch (1980/1983), 208-227 (pp.223-224); Karin Werner-Jensen, Studien zur ‘Don Giovanni’-Rezeption im 19. Jahrhundert (1800-1850) (Tutzing: Schneider, 1980), pp.70-88 and the commentary in Hoffmann, Sämtliche Werke, II/1, pp.676-679. 2 Bitter, Wandlungen in den Inszenierungsformen, pp.97-102; Kreutzer, ‘Der Mozart der Dichter’, pp.223-224; Kreutzer, ‘Proteus Mozart. Die Opern Mozarts in der Auffassung des 19. Jahrhunderts’, Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte, 60: 1 (1986), 1-23; Werner-Jensen, Studien zur ‘Don Giovanni’-Rezeption, pp.214-218. 3 Hartmut Steinecke, Die Kunst der Fantasie. E. T. A. Hoffmanns Leben und Werk (Frankfurt am Main: Insel, 2004), pp.109-114.