The Original Portrayal of Mozart’s Don Giovanni by Schneider, Magnus Tessing;

Short description:

The Original Portrayal of Mozart’s Don Giovanni offers an original reading of Mozart’s and Da Ponte’s opera Don Giovanni, using as a lens the portrayal of the title role by its creator, the baritone Luigi Bassi (1766-1825).

Long description:

The Original Portrayal of Mozart’s Don Giovanni offers an original reading of Mozart’s and Da Ponte’s opera Don Giovanni, using as a lens the portrayal of the title role by its creator, the baritone Luigi Bassi (1766–1825).

Although Bassi was coached in the role by the composer himself, his portrayal has never been studied in depth before, and this book presents a large number of new sources (first- and second-hand accounts), which allows us to reconstruct his performance scene by scene. The book confronts Bassi’s portrayal with a study of the opera’s early German reception and performance history, demonstrating how Don Giovanni as we know it today was not only created by Mozart, Da Ponte and Luigi Bassi but also by the early German adapters, translators, critics and performers who turned the title character into the arrogant and violent villain we still encounter in most of today’s stage productions.

Incorporating discussion of dramaturgical thinking of the late Enlightenment and the difficult moral problems that the opera raises, this is an important study for scholars and researchers from opera studies, theatre and performance studies, music history as well as conductors, directors and singers.

This was just the book I needed when staging Don Giovanni. Magnus Tessing Schneider has done a fantastic job documenting the preparations that led to the first performance of this most controversial of operas, in Prague in 1787. Building on facts, he dares oppose the false tradition that emerged after the deaths of Mozart and Da Ponte, and which portrays the title character as simply ‘a bad man who ends up in hell’. As I read this inspiring book, I understood why Giovanni is rather like Carmen, that other rebellious spirit who is also killed and with whom we also sympathize. Might we do so because they are free in a way that we are not? Presenting us with the enigma, the book leaves it to us to find the answer.

- Andrei Șerban, stage director

This is an important book. It is important as a radical historical reinterpretation of an iconic work of art, but also as a defiant challenge to certain tendencies in today’s intellectual climate. […]

Tessing Schneider’s historical examination is driven by a revisionist agenda but leans on a patient and systematic argumentation based on a large and diverse source material. It never becomes programmatic but is characterised by a combination of rigorous source criticism and inventive analytical observations. By means of this method, the author reaches a new and enthralling understanding of one of the most scrutinised works in the history of opera. He has presented us with a Don Giovanni who is even more interesting, complex, and thought-provoking than has commonly been assumed.

Moreover, this study is important because of what it reveals about a certain contemporary inclination: an impulse towards simplification and unambiguity in the interpretation of fictional stories and characters, and towards the instrumentalisation of historical works of art to suit present ideological agendas."

Lars Berglund, Swedish Journal of Music Research

Table of Contents:

Introduction

Rewriting the myth of Don Juan

The demonising of Don Giovanni: A historical overview

The singer and his role

Intention and experience: Prescriptive and descriptive sources

The performer as a phenomenon

Grace and gallantry: Bassi’s portrayal

Performance traditions: Italians and Germans

Donna Elvira’s entrance aria

The duettino

The quartet and Donna Anna’s narration

The champagne aria

The garden scene

The ballroom scene

The first duet with Leporello

The trio

The canzonetta

The disguise aria

The supper

The last encounter with Donna Elvira

Don Giovanni and the stone guest

The final scene