Law and Opera by Filippo Annunziata & Giorgio Fabio Colombo

Author:Filippo Annunziata & Giorgio Fabio Colombo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

4 On Comic Inequalities

The small intermezzo was composed by Hasse some 70 years before Mozart’s trilogy with Da Ponte. In that period, both the literary and musical models of the opera buffa underwent deep transformations, as well as the social world, which was becoming ever more complex. Le Nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni are affected by such changes and portraits them in their plots. Le Nozze di Figaro in particular, being characterised by a strong polemical attitude towards aristocracy, gives us interesting cues on the relation among social change, equality and social complexity. In Don Giovanni, one may detect the idea of negative equality (e.g., equality as the denial of the superiority of aristocracy). In Figaro’s opera, the relation between equality and the plot is more articulated: when differences become less dramatic, action may become more free, hence more complex. Since in Le Nozze di Figaro the question of equality is more relevant, I will analyse Don Giovanni first, although it was composed later.

In 1787, Mozart composed the music for Don Giovanni, whose libretto had been written by Lorenzo Da Ponte. The collaboration between Mozart and the abbot (actually a converted Jew) had started 2 years earlier, in fall 1785, when Mozart asked the Italian man of letters a libretto based on Le mariage de Figaro by Beaumarchais. Don Giovanni had its debut on the 29 October, in Prague, a city where Mozart had already successfully staged Le Nozze di Figaro.11 Seemingly an adaptation of El Burlador de Sevilla by Tirso de Molina, the opera was actually based on a later libretto.12 Mozart’s opera is far both from the Catholic morality that characterises Molina’s play and from the farcical representation of Don Giovanni typical of eighteenth century theatre.13 The plot of the opera is complex, has full of characters and action and represents the unlucky erotic and social adventures of the burlador. Sociologically, the most interesting element of the plot is the evident collapse of the social prestige of the aristocracy, exemplified by the behaviour and the moral character of the protagonist.

Here follows a short synopsis: a disguised Don Giovanni tries to rape Donna Anna. At her cries, the Commendatore, father of Donna Anna, runs to her aid. He fights a duel with Don Giovanni and is eventually killed. After a series of unlucky adventures, Don Giovanni takes refuge in the cemetery where the father of Donna Anna is buried, and there he recklessly invites the statue of the Commendatore, animated by his ghost, for a dinner. The opera ends with Don Giovanni sinking to hell. Coherently with the coeval morals, the final punishment of the sinner (‘… Questo è il fin di chi fa mal! E de’ perfidi la morte alla vita è sempre ugual’) is more a cliché than an actual disapproval of Don Giovanni’s dissolution.

From my specific perspective, two moments of the plot are particularly meaningful:1.Donna Anna, with her devoted but inept fiancé (Don Ottavio), goes to Don Giovanni, asking his help in their search for the murder of the Commendatore.

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