Don Giovanni excerpts, arr. for winds

Collaborations between Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) and librettist Lorenzo da Ponte produced three of the finest classical operas in existence, including the powerful blend of drama and comedy that is Don Giovanni. Treating the perennial tale of the seducer who finally gets his just deserts, Don Giovanni premiered to rapturous acclaim in Prague in 1787. The opera’s philosophical and supernatural elements have made it significant in the history of aesthetics, while the masterful blend of intense drama with buffa caricatures and ribald subject matter have extended its impact to all levels of culture.
The overture seeks to capture both sides of the anti-hero, Giovanni. On one hand he is charismatic, virile, and filled with an irrepressible joy for life. On the other hand he flaunts conventional morality and treats other people as objects merely for servitude or conquest. Mozart begins the overture with Giovanni’s darker side in two powerful D-minor chordal outbursts. These signature chords recur at the opera’s climactic scene, when the ghostly commendatore confronts our hero for his sins. These gestures are answered by a variation on the Baroque lament bass progression, in which the harmonic foundation falls chromatically by step from tonic down to the dominant. A third idea emerges in the striking augmented 2nds in first violin with an evocative, needling sixteenth-note figure in second violin. Mozart carefully controls the pacing and use of ascending and descending lines. For instance, note how the wavelike scales in the flute and first violin mark an overall ascending progression from D to A, with each chromatic step filled in along the way. All this material functions as a slow introduction to the sonata-form main body in D major. The brilliant major-mood main theme could just as easily have stepped off the pages of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro. Below the sunny surface, one finds subtle details that betray the master’s hand: his use of contrasting rhythms between upper and lower strings; broad gestures answered by rapid, staccato ones; a crystal-clear tonal structure that allows us to follow the exposition, development, and recapitulation—all within a taut, six-minute overture.
The plot of the opera centers on Giovanni’s libidinous machinations, involving both aristocratic (Donna Anna, Donna Elvira) and peasant women (Zerlina, who is engaged to Masetto). In Act 1, Scene 3 we move to the countryside where Zerlina and Masetto are celebrating their nuptials. “Giovinette, che fate all’amore” is a vigorous chorus in G major and 6/8 meter—two musical elements with a long history of pastoral associations. Ever the gallant and ever the scoundrel, Giovanni strides onto the scene and offers to host their wedding feast at his estate. With Masetto temporarily out of the picture, Giovanni draws Zerlina into the famous duet “Là ci darem la mano.” Note how Mozart begins the melody immediately without any prelude as if Giovanni’s lust can brook no further delay. Gradually the pair begin to finish each other’s phrases; Zerlina’s resistance is quickly fading. The duet culminates with a turn to 6/8 as they share the text “Andiam, mio bene” (Let’s go, my dear).
Much of the opera’s darker moments are limited to Act 2. In that act we witness how Giovanni’s sexual addiction includes gross condescension and chauvinism. As soon as the game is won, entreaties turn to laughter. For example, he scoffs at Elvira’s renewed affections and swaps clothes with his servant, Leporello, in order to have some fun at her expense. After various encounters Elvira—torn between anger and desire—laments her conflicting emotions in “Mi tradì quell'alma ingrate,” the concluding part of Scene 2 and one of Mozart’s finest arias. For all his obvious misdeeds, it falls to supernatural forces to finally bring Giovanni to justice. The slain commendatore returns in stone form, his statue come to life and come to drag Giovanni to hell. With the return of the D-minor Overture music, furies claim their victim. Various threads are knotted back together in a final, moralizing sextet: “Such is the horrific end for all who sin so boldly.” Surely no one sins so boldly as Don Giovanni. Surely no one else so consistently subverts societal laws to satisfy his personal desires. And surely no one portrayed the rise and fall of this character-type so well as Mozart.

(c) Jason Stell