Don Giovanni
Music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte
October 16 | 7:30PM
October 18 | 2:00PM
Performances at The Grand Opera House
Sung in Italian with English supertitles
Running time: 3 hours (including one intermission)
Don Giovanni is a moral thriller, a ghost story, and a dark comedy wrapped in some of the most electrifying music ever written. History’s most infamous seducer evades the consequences of his lascivious actions until the supernatural world comes calling. See what happens when his bill finally comes due when OperaDelaware presents Mozart's Don Giovanni at The Grand Opera House, October 16 and 18.
the Cast of Don Giovanni
Sarah Coit as Donna Elvira
Dylan Gregg as Leporello
Gerard Moon as Masetto
the creative team of Don Giovanni
Haley Stamats, Director
Joshua Horsch, Conductor
Mozart’s Don Giovanni was written in 1787 with a libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte and for over two centuries has occupied a special place in the operatic canon. The composer designated it a drama giocoso (a playful drama) but perhaps it would be better described as a moral thriller, a ghost story, and a comedy all rolled into one.
The opera centers on Don Giovanni, a Spanish nobleman of insatiable appetites and stunning moral depravity. Giovanni is a morally bankrupt libertine who has evaded consequences for his entire life. His servant Leporello, the opera’s greatest comedic force, maintains a catalogue of his master’s conquests across Europe: one thousand and three in Spain alone. Giovanni is not merely insatiable, he is relentless.
The opera opens in the aftermath of an assault. Don Giovanni has attempted to force himself on Donna Anna, a noblewoman of rank and iron will. Her father, the Commendatore, confronts him and is killed in the duel that follows.
Donna Anna, consumed by grief and determined to seek justice, enlists her betrothed, Don Ottavio, in her quest for vengeance. Donna Elvira, a woman Giovanni previously seduced and abandoned, arrives in a state of furious, wounded dignity and fearless determination. They are soon joined by Zerlina, a peasant girl nearly lured away on her wedding day, as Giovanni’s lascivious rampage continues.
Giovanni evades, manipulates, and charms his way through every confrontation. But the opera takes a supernatural twist when Giovanni, in an act of staggering hubris, invites the stone statue of the slain Commendatore to dinner. The statue accepts. Giovanni has one final opportunity to repent. Will the lifelong Lothario choose damnation over contrition? Find out this fall when OperaDelaware presents Mozart’s Don Giovanni.
Synopsis
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The opera opens not with seduction, but with violence narrowly averted and then realized. Don Giovanni is discovered attempting to force himself on Donna Anna in her own home. When her father, the Commendatore, intervenes to defend his daughter's honor, Don Giovanni kills him in a duel and flees into the night. Donna Anna, finding her father's body, demands a vow of vengeance from her fiancé, Don Ottavio.
Don Giovanni's pattern repeats almost immediately. We meet Donna Elvira, a woman he has already seduced and abandoned. His servant Leporello delivers the opera's most damning piece of evidence: a literal catalogue of over two thousand conquests across four countries, recited with the procedural detachment of an inventory list. Mozart's choice to score this moment as comedy is itself an indictment; we are meant to feel the joke curdle.
At a village wedding, Don Giovanni sets his sights on the bride, Zerlina, manipulating the groom out of the room so he can work uninterrupted. His seduction is interrupted first by Donna Elvira and then by Donna Anna and Don Ottavio, who unknowingly ask the murderer himself for help identifying the murderer. By the act's close, three women he has wronged stand together and unmask him publicly. He talks his way out of it and evades punishment yet again.
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Don Giovanni trades clothes with Leporello to pursue yet another woman, leaving his servant to absorb both Donna Elvira's affection and, later, a mob's intent to kill him in his master's place. Zerlina's fiancé, Masetto, is beaten and humiliated for the crime of trying to protect his bride. Leporello is nearly torn apart by the very people Don Giovanni has wronged who mistakenly identify him as the Don.
The supernatural enters when Don Giovanni, wandering a graveyard, mockingly invites the murdered Commendatore's statue to dinner. The statue accepts.
At the final banquet, Donna Elvira returns one last time. She does not seek revenge, but comes instead to ask him to change. Don Giovanni mocks her. Moments later, the statue arrives to collect on its invitation, offering him one final opportunity to repent. Giovanni refuses. He is dragged to hell by a chorus of demons, unrepentant to the last syllable.
The surviving characters announce their plans to marry, mourn, and move on with their lives in a closing ensemble that reminds us that this is how life ends for those who live the way Don Giovanni lived.