 
In the terryfying shere of infernal spirits |
In the terrifying sphere of infernal spirits
Mozart's Don Giovanni - prelude and finale
The beginning predicts the end: the overture Mozart composed for his Don Giovanni unfolds all the horrors of death awaiting the hero, the "punished lecher" at the end of his dissipated life. The opening bars contain the admonishing and unsettling sounds of the threat of judgement, the vision of doom, the torments of hell and fear of annihilation. During this andante introduction E.T.A. Hoffmann was seized by shudders of the terrifying, underground regno all pianto: "I was overcome by terrible premonitions of horror", he confesses in his Don Juan narrative. Even the opera buffa spirit of the subsequent molto allegro main section as it aimlessly presses forward can no longer allow this shattering warning sign to be forgotten. "The jubilant fanfare in the seventh bar of the allegro sounded to me like an exultant heinous deed," explains Hoffmann, "From the depths of night I saw fiery demons stretching out their glowing claws for the life of happy people dancing merrily on the thin covering of the bottomless abyss. The conflict of human nature with unknown, horrible forces surrounding him, awaiting his downfall, was clearly revealed in my mind's eye. Finally the storm subsides and the curtain goes up."
Exuberance versus superiority
It was precisely this prelude to Don Giovanni that Richard Wagner had
in mind when he ascribed to Mozart the musicological honour of having
given the overture its "true significance". He wrote, "Without wanting
to express in an embarrassing way what music never can and should express,
namely the details and intricacies of the story itself, as the prologue
formerly attempted to analyse, he took in with the glance of a true poet
the central, principle ideas of the drama."
In the case of the overture to Don Giovanni this is the irreconcilable
and tragic contradiction between the main traits of the opera. "A passionate,
exuberant excitement is in conflict with a terribly threatening superior
power which seems determined to make the other submit." In the "nobility
of intention as well as of performance", Wagner felt that this overture
was an unattainable masterpiece. Mozart did not write down the overture
until after his arrival in Prague - allegedly during the night before
the premiere - where Don Giovanni the "opera of all operas" was first
performed on 29 October 1787 in the Gräflich Nostitzsches National Theatre.
It is one of a number of compositions that he completed under the most
adverse circumstances and yet not a single bar betrays any hint of hectic
writing in the process of its creation. Power of Justice Is the end aware
of the beginning? The last scene with which Mozart's and Da Ponte's Don
Giovanni comes to an end gathers together the circle of survivors for
one last time around their common centre.
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| Don Giovanni, the opera of all operas, will be presented in a new staging in the Grosses Festspielhaus from August 9th, 2000. Photo: Monika Rittershaus |
They are urged back into "normal" life, into a hopeful, hopeless or banal future, depending on the character in question. And this finale celebrates the power of justice, to which ultimately even the most unrestrained sinner has to submit: "Questo è il fin di chi fa mal!" - "That is the end of anyone who commits evil!" Quite a few people seem to have been irritated by this last scene, which they found to be superfluous, implausible and conventional. Adorno even demanded that it simply be omitted. "The grandeur of the scene with the Commendatore far surpasses all the previous action and what comes afterwards must pale in comparison. No reference to style has power over a work that at its height annuls its own principle of stylisation. The weakness of the finale in a major key is not a fortunate return to the form: it testifies to how irretrievable the eighteenth century has become through Mozart." It is evident from the autograph manuscript that when the opera was produced in Vienna Mozart did indeed consider dispensing with the final scene and had noted an abrupt ending following the amoral hero's descent into hell, presumably for practical reasons, certainly not for aesthetic reasons. The libretto of the first performance in Vienna in 1788 also breaks off at this point with the fiery crim- inal judgement. But nowadays who would presume to speak the last word on the appropriate ending, the only true solution of Don Giovanni? On no account did E.T.A. Hoffmann want to do without the final scene, which "marvellously rounds off the work to a complete whole". He continues, "Don Giovanni and the demons have disappeared and no one knows how! Leporello is lying unconscious in a corner of the room. How beneficial it is when the other characters appear, searching in vain for Giovanni, who has been taken away by the underground forces of earthly revenge. It is as if one had only just managed to escape the terrible sphere of infernal spirits".