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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 January 2009
After the triumph of its première in Prague in November 1787, Don Giovanni enjoyed little immediate success in the theatres of central Europe. It was received with indifference in Vienna, with unease, even outright hostility elsewhere. Mozart's music on its own aroused almost universal admiration, but as a dramatic medium it unsettled audiences. This was best expressed by a correspondent for the Chronik von Berlin, who saw the first performance at the Berlin National Theatre in December 1790. In his review he granted readily that ‘Mozart is an excellent, a great composer’ but in Don Giovanni he felt that greatness to have been betrayed.
2. Excerpted in Deutsch, Otto Erich, Mozart: A Documentary Biography, tr. Blom, Eric, Brans-combe, Peter & Noble, Jeremy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1965), 380.Google Scholar
3. Extracted in Rushton, Julian, W. A. Mozart: Don Giovanni (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 123–4.Google Scholar
4. The most thorough study of these years can be found in Zechmeister, Gustav, Die Wiener Theater nächst der Burg und nächsl dem Kärntnertortheater von 1747 bis 1776, Theatergeschichte Oesterreiches, III, 2 (Vienna: Bohlau, 1971).Google Scholar
5. A good summary of Josef II's reforms and of the monarch's position in the unitary state that resulted is provided by Blanning, T. C. W. in Joseph II and Enlightened Despotism, Seminar Studies in History (London: Longmans, 1970).Google Scholar
6. Quoted in Kindermann, Heinz, ‘Das Publikum und die Schauspieler-Republik’, in Das Burg-theater und sein Publikum, ed. Dietrich, Margret, der Wissenschaften, Österreichische Akademie, Klasse, Philosophische-Historische, 305 (Vienna: Der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1976), 99.Google Scholar
7. Quoted in Kindermann, Heinz, Theatergeschichte Europas, vol. 5 (Salzburg: Otto Müller, 1962), 97.Google Scholar
8. Die Jäger was first performed at the Burgtheater in December 1786 and was given 50 performances to 1810, 105 performances to 1869. For purposes of comparison, an even more celebrated popular play, Kotzebue's Menschenhass und Reue (best known in the English-language world as The Stranger) was first performed in 1789, received 64 performances to 1810 and 123 performances to 1855. Goethe's Clavigo, first performed at the Burgtheater in 1786, received only 8 performances to 1810 and 28 performances to 1839. Don Giovanni received 15 performances to 1788 and then was revived, in German in 1798, to receive 14 performances to 1803. See Hadamowsky, Franz, Die Wiener Hoftheater 1776–1966, 1 (Vienna: Prachner, 1966)Google Scholar and Burgtheater 1776–1976, 1 (Vienna: Ueberreuter, n.d. [1976]).Google Scholar
9. Iffiand, August Wilhelm, Die Jäger, in Theater, 1 (Vienna: Klang, 1843), 229.Google Scholar
10. Bitter, Christoph, Wandlungen in den Inszenierungsformen des Don Giovanni von 1787 bis 1928 (Regens-burg: Gustav Bosse, 1961), 38.Google Scholar
11. This has been a constant preoccupation of the critical discussion of Don Giovanni since Hoffmann, E. T. A.'s tale ‘Don Juan’ (1813)Google Scholar, published in his collection Phantasiestücke in Callots Manier (1814).Google Scholar
12. The most comprehensive treatment of the subject is in Lert, Ernst, Mozart auf dem Theater (Berlin & Leipzig: Schuster & LoefRer, 1921), especially 30–104Google Scholar. A more recent discussion can be found in Mann, Michael, ‘Sturm und Drang: Drama oder Theater’, Mozart-Jahrbuch (1973–1974), 33–8.Google Scholar
13. The manner in which the free, creative personality challenges the artificial barriers of society is discussed in detail in chapter 5 of Pascal, Roy's German Sturm und Drang (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1953).Google Scholar
14. Menhennet, Alan, Order and Freedom (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1973), 119.Google Scholar
15. Brophy, Brigid, Mozart the Dramatist (N.Y.: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1964), 244.Google Scholar
16. Hildesheimer, Wolfgang, Mozart (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1977), 245–6.Google Scholar
17. See Gresser, William, ‘The Meaning of “Due della Notte’ in Don Giovanni’, Mozart-Jahrbuch (1971–1972), 244–54.Google Scholar
18. Einstein, Alfred, Mozart: His Character, His Work (London: Oxford University Press, 1945), 95.Google Scholar
19. Julius von Tarent was performed 9 times between 1785 and 1791. Fiesko was performed 16 times between 1787 and 1793, but in an edition that had been ‘specially adapted for Vienna’. As the play was repeated, Schiller's text encountered more and more cuts until the play was banned entirely in 1793.
20. Between 1781 and 1785, Friedrich Ludwig Schröder, who did much to introduce Shakespeare onto the German stage, was resident at the Burgtheater. In addition to acting in severely adapted versions of Hamlet and King Lear, he played leads in adaptations of Henry IV (11 1782)Google Scholar, Cymbeline (12, 1782)Google Scholar and Othello (1785)Google Scholar. The Burgtheater also staged Measure for Measure (1783)Google Scholar and The Merry Wives of Windsor (1784)Google Scholar but in such altered versions that the originals could hardly be recognized. See Stahl, Ernst Leopold, Shakespeare and das deutsche Theater (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1947), 117.Google Scholar
21. Michtner, Otto, Das alter Burgtheater als Operabühne, Theatergeschichte Österreichs III, I (Vienna: Böhlau, 1970), 208.Google Scholar
22. Quoted in Grendel, Frédéric, Beaumarchais ou la calomnie (Paris: Flammarion, 1973), 413.Google Scholar
23. Noske, Frits, ‘Don Giovanni: An Interpretation; The Signifier and the Signified (The Hague: Mar-tinus Nijhoff, 1977), 86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
24. Kunze, Stefan, Mozarts Opern (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1984), 320.Google Scholar
25. Strohm, Reinhard, Die italienische Oper im 18. Jahrhundert (Wilhelmshaven: Heinrichshofen, 1979), 25.Google Scholar
26. Noske, , 85.Google Scholar
27. Downs, Philip, ‘Problems of Opera Research, 1730–1790’, Crosscurrents and the Mainstream of Italian Serious Opera, 1730–1790, Studies in Music from the University of Western Ontario, 7, 1 (1983), 5.Google Scholar
28. Don Neville, , ‘Moral Philosophy in the Metastasian Dramas’, Crosscurrents, 35.Google Scholar
29. Robinson, Michael F., ‘The Ancient and the Modern: A Comparison of Metastasio and Calza-bigi’, Crosscurrents, 139–40.Google Scholar
30. Of the several discussions about how the Don Juan story was treated in the eighteenth-century theatre, the most thorough can be found in Kunze, Stefan, Don Giovanni vor Mozart (Munich: Fink, 1972).Google Scholar
31. Kunze, , Mozarts Opern, 322–4.Google Scholar
32. Ernst Lert observes that ‘Leporello’ is a hispanisization of the Hanswurst character Lipperl, who first appeared on the stage in Graz in 1760, and was later seen in Vienna (341).
33. Mann, William, The Operas of Mozart (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 477.Google Scholar
34. Honolka, Kurt's judgement in Kulturgeschichte des Librettos (Wilhemshaven: Heinrichshofen, 1979), 95Google Scholar, that the events at the beginning of act 2 are nothing more than ‘a chain of purely routine misunderstandings’ is based upon the puzzling but oft-repeated assumption that Da Ponte's libretto is strong only where it sticks close to its source, the Bertati libretto for Ganzaniga's setting. In fact, such an assumption fails entirely to recognise the social implications of the opera.
35. See Hoffmann, E. T. A., ‘Don Juan’, Werke, 1 (Cologne: Prösdorf, 1965), 48–9.Google Scholar
36. Allanbrooke, Wye Jamieson, Rhythmic Gesture in Mozart (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 224.Google Scholar
37. Robinson, M. F., ‘The Aria in Opera Seria, 1725–1780’, Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, 88 (1962), 33.Google Scholar
38. Noske, , 87.Google Scholar
39. Allenbrooke discusses in detail both the musical and dramatic indeterminacy of the Don Giovanni character (207–24).
40. Kunze, , Mozarts Opern, 328.Google Scholar
41. Brophy, , 237–9.Google Scholar
