Don Giovanni
In mid-September Mozart and Constanze went to Prague, bringing the partly finished Don Giovanni score. Bondini had found the composer lodgings at the house on the Kohlmarkt called the “Three Lion Cubs.” Across the way, at the inn Zum Platteis, rooms were engaged for Da Ponte and, as the windows faced each other, composer and librettist had long discussions across the narrow street about details of the book, in the preparation of which Mozart, with his keen dramatic instincts, played a dominating role. He and Constanze appeared, however, to have spent quite as much time with the Duscheks at the Bertramka as at the “Three Lion Cubs.” Rehearsals consumed a great amount of energy, there were numerous modifications to be made in the music (the young baritone, Luigi Bassi, who had the title role, demanded five recastings of the duet La ci darem before he was satisfied with the music), and Mozart had all manner of trouble with Catarina Micelli, the Elvira. In addition, the singer of Zerlina, Caterina Bondini, could not utter the peasant girl’s shriek in the first finale to the composer’s satisfaction until he terrified her by grasping her roughly and thus causing her to scream exactly as he wanted. After one of the last rehearsals the conductor, Kucharz, being asked by the master for his candid opinion of the opera, replied encouragingly: “Whatever comes from Mozart will always delight in Bohemia.” “I assure you, dear friend, I have spared myself no pains to produce something worthy for the people of Prague!” declared the composer, who had already boasted that “my Praguers understand me.”
Here is the place, no doubt, to tell once more the oft-repeated tale of the overture, put on paper, according to a hoary legend, the night before the première while Constanze kept the master awake by plying him with punch and telling him stories. As a matter of fact, the overture was written the night before the dress rehearsal—and it was nothing unusual for Mozart to write down at the last moment a work mentally finished in every detail.
A few days after the first performance the Prague Oberpostamtszeitung published a review that probably excels anything ever written about the opera. It read simply: “Connoisseurs and musicians say that nothing like it has ever been produced in Prague.” The opinion is probably as true today as in 1787. For there is literally nothing like Don Giovanni, either among its composer’s creations or elsewhere. One can only share the emotion of Rossini when, being shown the manuscript score, he said to its owner, the singer Pauline Viardot-Garcia: “I want to bow the knee before this sacred relic!” And echo the words of Richard Wagner: “What is more perfect than every number in ‘Don Giovanni’? Where else has music won so infinitely rich an individuality, been able to characterize so surely, so definitely and in such exuberant plentitude as here?”
Figaro is, if you will, the more perfect artistic entity of the two; Don Giovanni is looser, less consistent, on the surface even grossly illogical. But so, too, is human nature. And if all the world’s a stage, what more than a dramma giocoso is the experience of life? Whatever the narrow intent of Lorenzo da Ponte, when he carpentered the book out of well-worn odds and ends, it was with a profound knowledge of the sorrows and absurdities of humankind that Mozart breathed into it an abiding soul.
“Long live da Ponte, long live Mozart!” had written the stage director, Domenico Guardasoni. “All impresarios, all artists must exalt them to the skies; for as long as such men live there can be no more question of theatre miseries!” The Duscheks outdid themselves to make life pleasant for their guests. Mozart found time to compose several songs and even a superb concert air, Bella mia fiamma, addio, for Josefa after that lady had locked him up in the garden house till he had finished the promised music.
On November 15, 1787, which virtually coincided with the composer’s return to Vienna, Gluck died. Less than a month later Joseph II appointed Mozart to the older master’s post of Kammerkompositeur, with an annual salary of 800 Gulden. Gluck had received 2000; and before long Mozart was complaining that his pay was “too much for what he did, too little for what he could do.” What he did was principally to supply minuets, contradances, and Teutsche for court balls and similar occasions.
The year 1788 dawned in gloomy fashion for Mozart. To be sure, Don Giovanni had its first Viennese hearing on May 7, with a cast including his sister-in-law, Aloysia Lange, as Donna Anna, Catarina Cavalieri (the original Constanze in Die Entführung) as Elvira, and Francesco Benucci, the first Figaro, as Leporello. Mozart had cut out some numbers, replacing them with new ones, eliminated the platitudinous epilogue, and ended the work with the prodigious hell music of Don Giovanni’s disappearance. The Emperor remarked: “The opera is divine, perhaps even finer than ‘Figaro.’ But it is a rather tough morsel for the teeth of my Viennese”—to which Mozart replied, “Let us give them time to chew it!”