Don Giovanni (1787)

Libretto by Giovanni Bertati; first performed in Venice 5th February 1787.
English translation by Jeremy Gray and Gilly French

The Orangery terrace, Westonbirt School 28 August 2004
St John's Smith Square, 16 September 2004

Cast 2004

Synopsis

Part I
Don Giovanni attempts to seduce Donna Anna whilst his manservant Pasquariello keeps lonely watch outside. Giovanni is challenged to a duel by Anna's father, the Commendatore; the Commendatore is killed and Anna's fiancé, Duca Ottavio, swears vengeance. In his search for new adventures Giovanni encounters his forsaken love Donna Elvira. Pasquariello delights in telling Elvira every detail of his master's many conquests whilst the Don is busy wooing Donna Ximena. A party of peasants enters: Maturina and Biagio are about to celebrate their wedding. Giovanni relishes the opportunity of yet another conquest, and sees off an angry Biagio. He skilfully manoeuvres his way out of a simultaneous collision with all three women, leaving Maturina and Elvira to fight it out between themselves.

Part II
Ottavio visits the Commendatore's mausoleum, followed by the Don and his servant. To Pasquariello's terror, the statue visibly and audibly accepts an invitation to supper: Giovanni however is unconvinced. Back at Giovanni's house, Elvira arrives and makes an impassioned but unsuccessful final plea for the Don to mend his ways. As the evening progresses Giovanni and Pasquariello share the pleasures of good food and wine, singing the praises of life's delights, the beauties of Venice, and Venetian women in particular. The statue arrives to keep its appointment and drags an unrepentant Giovanni to his death. Ottavio and the women enter, aroused by the noise; Pasquariello and the cook Lanterna describe Giovanni's downfall and the opera ends with final rejoicing.

Cast 2004 - Synopsis - Don Juan transformed
Production photos - Cast 1997
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Don Juan transformed

by Jeremy Gray

Busoni's Turandot, Paisiello's Barber of Seville, Grétry's William Tell, Leoncavallo's La Bohème: the history of opera is full of narratives and libretti which, although often successful enough in their day, have sunk into obscurity once eclipsed by a more illustrious rival. Don Giovanni as both title and character has long been enshrined as the rightful property of Mozart, and to append an alternative composer - especially one as obscure as Giuseppe Gazzaniga - might seem to be an illegal usurpation of entitlement. Yet in choosing the theme of the lascivious Don for his Prague commission of 1787, Mozart was adopting a hackneyed and blatantly commercial theme, already made popular in that city through at least three earlier operas of 1723, 1730 and 1776. In fact Mozart's was the fourth opera on the subject composed in 1787 alone: Gazzaniga's version for the Teatro San Moisè in Venice was premiered in February and quickly followed by one by Gardi, written for a rival Venetian company and with many obvious derivations. Goethe commented on the impressive success of the one act version by Vicenzo Fabrizi, given at the Teatro Valle in Rome in the autumn, which "was performed every night for four weeks and so excited the city that the whole family of every last shopkeeper filled the stalls and boxes, and no one could go on living who had not seen Don Juan roasted in Hell". Notwithstanding the fact that the story offended the rationality of the age of enlightenment and raised the hackles of the polite litterati, there was no doubting the likelihood of box-office success for any dramatic or musical rendering of the theme.

The origins of the story which thus came to possess almost mythological status lie in the 'Golden Age' of Spanish literature, with the earliest surviving edition being El Burlador de Sevilla y Convidado de piedra of 1637 by Tirso de Molina, a monk whose dramatic activities were condemned by the Council of Castille's Committee for Reform. Many aspects of the story and characters familiar from subsequent paraphrases are already found in Tirso's original - the long-suffering servant aware of his atheistical master's moral outrages, the Don's seductions of aristocrats and peasants alike, the rape (or at least attempt) in the darkness of the Duke Ottavio's fiancée, the murder of her father whose tomb-statue is bizarrely invited to dinner, and the ultimate penalty which the unrepentant Don pays. Subsequent versions adapted and moulded this material to their own ends and cultures, amongst which the greatest are undoubtedly by Molière (Don Juan, ou le festin de pierre, 1665) and the Venetian comic writer Carlo Goldini (Don Giovanni Tenorio, ossia il dissoluto, 1738), as well as an English version, The Libertine, by Shadwell (1676). Around this core of literary masterpieces grew a mass of more popular versions, including fairground pantomimes, the Commedia dell'arte, and puppet-shows. Indeed, in the libretto of the Capriccio with which Bertati and Gazzaniga prefaced their Don Giovanni (the music is now lost), the singers are heard complaining that they are required to perform such a clichéd drama.

Giovanni Bertati (1735-1815), who provided the texts to most of Gazzaniga's operas, was the leading librettist of his day in Venice, and consequently became the victim of disparagement in the memoirs of his compatriot rival the Abbate da Ponte. In fact he was to briefly succeed da Ponte as Court dramatist in Vienna (1791-1794), where he wrote the text for what has become the most enduring Italian work of the period, Cimarosa's Il matrimonio segreto. He returned to Venice in 1794 and retired as Archivist at the Arsenale (the statue photographed for the publicity for tonight's performance stands outside that remarkable building). Bertati's libretto for Don Giovanni maintains many links with the popular tradition but also draws extensively from Molière, with lesser borrowings from Goldoni. The name of the Don's servant, Pasquariello, who occupies much of the centre-stage and provides most of the comic content whilst also acting as a more serious voice of moral conscience, is drawn from the Commedia dell'arte, as is his catalogue of conquest, the 'list' aria which da Ponte was also to make use of. Many passages and details of the text are taken from Molière: the Don's play-off of the rivalling Donna Elvira and the peasant Maturina (which Gazzaniga sets to a brilliantly caustic duet, reminiscent of that of Marcellina and Susanna in Figaro) comes from the French playwright's scene of the two peasant rivals Charlotte and Mathurine; Pasquariello's lavish description of his master as the "Alexander the Great of women", his account of the Don's vices which suddenly changes to a fulsome list of his virtues when the Don walks into sight, and the farcical incident of his stealing a meatball from the dinner table as well as the under-servant changing the plates as soon as his head is turned are closely paralleled. Bertati can thus hardly be credited with originality, and his characters may be little more than ciphers: yet he was undoubtedly an accomplished and successful librettist and his text provided the basis for an opera of effective movement and contrast. The action unfolds at breathtaking speed, from the opening rape of Donna Anna and the murder of the Commendatore, to the horrifying appearance of the stone guest at Giovanni's supper. These sections convey the tone of opera seria, as do a number of the solo arias: yet there can be no doubting that the overall mood - in keeping with its origins during the Venetian carnival season - is that of opera buffa, with plenty of potential for comedy and farce.

Giuseppe Gazzaniga (1743-1818) was born in Verona and was originally intended by his father for the priesthood, before turning to music studies in Venice and at the conservatory in Naples, becoming a pupil of the successful operatic composer Piccinni. Although his first opera was for Naples, he returned to Venice and produced a number of works, mostly in the popular genre of opera buffa (a total of at least 40) for cities in northern and central Italy. He was also well-known in Dresden and Vienna where several of his operas were produced between 1774 and 1795, including Il finto cieco, (1786) to a libretto by da Ponte. Four years after the great success of his Don Giovanni, Gazzaniga became maestro di capella at Crema Cathedral, and turned mostly to the composition of sacred works. His works are now almost entirely forgotten (although Don Giovanni demonstrates the unjustness of this obscurity), as are those by his contemporaries Paisiello and Cimarosa, a group whose lyrical but straightforward classicism was to be eclipsed by the more complex work of Rossini and the subsequent bel canto tradition.

Gazzaniga's score may come nowhere near rivalling Mozart's in emotional depth and maturity, yet it by no means deserves to be dismissed. He uses his small orchestra of strings, oboes and horns with considerable skill and variety of effect and colour, and the music has a rhythmic vitality and incisiveness which generally compensates for its harmonic limitations. The extended opening trio is superbly expressed and shaped, moving from the evocative nocturnal mood of the introductory bars, through the fiery altercation between Giovanni and the assaulted Anna, to the callous murder of the Commendatore, whose expiring breaths are superbly captured in the fragmented phrases of the three protaganists. There are a number of poised lyrical arias (two for Elvira, one each for Ottavio, Maturina and Giovanni, the latter concluding with a sting in its tail). The comic music has a deft energy and wit, especially the boisterous 'catalogue' aria of Pasquariello, which turns into a malicious duet with Elvira, as well as the snarling duet of Maturina and Elvira which descends to cat-scratching rivalry. The extensive 'brindisi' or drinking song in the finale, with its lavish praise of Venetian women, must have been especially endearing to the opera's first audiences, but also provides an infectious sense of the mutual friendship between Don and his servant and creates a effective foil to the dramatic climax of the statue's appearance. Throughout, Gazzaniga maintains interest through swift contrasts of mood, and above all, an energy and freshness which render his Don Giovanni a work of delightful appeal.

The links between the Bertati/Gazzaniga and the Da Ponte/Mozart operas which have long intrigued musicologists remain unresolved. There can be no doubt that the Bertati libretto reached Prague and was available to Lorenzo da Ponte (himself a Venetian, and a sometime friend of Giacomo Casanova), who, many years later, stated that it was turned down by Mozart when offered to him by the manager of the Italian Opera in that city, Pasquale Bondini. In a different account, da Ponte claimed that he himself chose the theme of Don Giovanni, and suggested it to the composer, an almost certain untruth. Bertati's script undoubtedly lacked the depth of character development which intrigued Mozart and, as a one-act work, was inadequate for his needs. Nevertheless, da Ponte 'borrowed' extensively from his rival's text, so that the opening and much of Act I in the Mozart, and the climax from the cemetery scene onwards in Act II are barely veiled appropriations. Some of the characters are renamed by da Ponte: Bertati's comic yet philosophical servant Pasquariello became Leporello (da Ponte dropped the additional servant Lanterna), the peasant girl Maturina whom the Don takes a fancy to on her wedding-day was renamed Zerlina, and da Ponte did away with the minor rôle of Donna Ximena. Whether Mozart himself knew the Gazzaniga score is far more controversial. His Ottavio, Antonio Baglioni, had sung the part of the Don in Venice (Gazzaniga wrote the title rôle for a tenor), and was a very likely source of transmission. The knowledgeable listener will detect striking resonances between the two versions: in the opening trio, for example, in the peasant wedding-scene, the graveyard scene, the use of the wind band during the supper scene, and the concluding hectic ensemble.

Gazzaniga's Don Giovanni was performed successfully not only during the February carnival season in Venice, but also in Rome, Paris (1792), Lisbon (1792) and London (1794) and the opera appears to have continued in circulation until 1821. Not all of these performances may have been according to the authentic text and score: the London production, for example, at the King's Theatre in Haymarket, was rearranged by the poet in residence there, da Ponte, who interspersed Gazzaniga's score with music by other composers, including the catalogue aria from Mozart's version. In recent years and since the Bärenreiter edition was published in 1974, there have been performances in Italy and Germany, as well as at the Wexford Opera Festival in the Irish Republic in 1988. In London, the opera was performed by Opera Viva in 1980. Two excellent recordings were made in 1991: a full edition on the Orfeo label, and a version without the recitatives on Sony Classical. The opening scene was included in a South Bank concert by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in 1996. Bampton Summer Opera's production is the first to be given in an English translation.

Cast 2004 - Synopsis - Don Juan transformed
Production photos - Cast 1997
back to top

Cast 1997

Cast 2004 - Synopsis - Don Juan transformed
Production photos - Cast 1997
back to top

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