At the same time he cannot refrain from the pious wish:—[See Page Image]
Oh, that he had not so wasted the energies of his mighty mind!—that his judgment had been brought to the aid of his imagination, and had shown him a less miry path to fame! How can it please him that his name should appear set in diamonds upon a golden tablet, and the tablet suspended on a pillory?
Spazier, who acknowledged Mozart's "true, unborrowed, unartificial wealth of ideas,"[ 46 ] and said of "Don Giovanni" that some of its single airs were worth more than whole operas by Paesiello,[ 47 ] remarks on another occasion:[ 48 ]—
The pleasure of seeing a genius strike out a new path with ease, which one feels would possess insurmountable obstacles to others, becomes pain and grief, which can only be turned to enjoyment again by minute study of the work, when such an artist puts forth his whole strength as Mozart has in "Don Juan," where he overwhelms his hearers with the vastness of his art, giving to the whole an almost boundless effect.
His promise of a more minute description remained unfulfilled. The various notices of the work which followed its performance in other places were all of the same kind, both praise and blame recognising the fact that a novel and important phenomenon was being treated of.[ 49 ] After the performance in Weimar, Goethe wrote to Schiller (December 30, 1797) ^
Your hopes for the opera are richly fulfilled in "Don Juan"; but the work is completely isolated, and Mozart's death frustrates any prospect of his example being followed.[ 50 ]
The popularity of the opera with the general public spread rapidly, and very soon there was no stage in Germany where "Don Juan" had not acquired permanent possession. According to Sonnleithner's calculation, "Don Giovanni" had been performed 531 times at Vienna at the end of the year 1863; at Prague, Stiepanek asserts that 116 representations took place during the first ten years, and 360 before 1855;[ 51 ] at the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of "Don Giovanni" at Berlin, in 1837, more than 200 performances were calculated to have taken place;[ 52 ] similar celebrations took place at Prague[ 53 ] and Magdeburg.[ 54 ] The opera was first introduced at Paris in 1805, in a fearfully distorted and mangled version, by C. Kalkbrenner; a characteristic instance was the masque terzet, where the words "Courage, vigilance, adresse, défiance, que l'active prudence préside à nos desseins" were sung by three gendarmes. Kalkbrenner also interpolated some of his own music, and, spite of it all, the fabrication pleased for a time.[ 55 ] In the year 1811 "Don Giovanni" was first given in its original form by the singers of the Italian opera, and ever since the most distinguished artists have retained Mozart's masterpiece upon this stage in an uninterrupted succession of performances.[ 56 ] A French translation of "Don Juan," by Castil-Blaze,[ 57 ] was given at Lyons in 1822, at the Odéon in Paris in 1827, and at the Académie de Musique in 1834, admirably cast and brilliantly appointed, besides being more true to the original;[ 58 ] a still newer adaptation has been performed at the Théätre Lyrique.[ 59 ] In London the great success of "Figaro" had paved the way for "Don Giovanni," which has ever since its STATISTICS OF PERFORMANCES. first performance, in April, 1817, occupied a prominent place at the Italian opera of that city. The applause which followed the first Italian representation was so great that the lessee of Covent Garden theatre produced an English version in May of the same year, which was excellently performed, and with considerable success.[ 60 ]
While "Don Giovanni" was thus becoming familiar to opera-goers in the north, and even in Petersburg, Stockholm, and Copenhagen, it had not met with any very warm or general sympathy in Italy, where repeated attempts to introduce it to the public had resulted only in a certain amount of respectful recognition from connoisseurs. "Don Giovanni" was first given in Rome in 1811, no pains having been spared in the rehearsals, and few alterations made in the opera. The audience was very attentive, and applauded loudly; the music was termed "bellissima, superba, sublime, un musicone"—but not altogether "del gusto del paese"; the many stranezze might be "belissime," but they were not what people were accustomed to.[ 61 ] A more successful attempt was made in Naples in the following year, although not on so grand a scale; the audience were attentive, and seemed to accustom themselves to the musica classica, but even here the success was not lasting.[ 62 ] The first representation at Milan in 1814 provoked quite as much hissing as applause, but subsequent performances were more successful.[ 63 ] At Turin the opera appears to have pleased in 1815, in spite of its wretched performance.[ 64 ] A mangled version of "Don Giovanni" was given at Florence in 1818, and failed, but it was afterwards very well received in its true form;[ 65 ] in 1857, as a friend wrote to me, "the antiquated hyperborean music" was so emphatically hissed that it could not be risked again. In Genoa, too, in 1824, "Don Giovanni" pleased the learned, but not the public;[ 66 ] and at Venice, in 1833, it gained some DON GIOVANNI. little popularity by slow degrees.[ 67 ] Quite lately a celebrated Italian singer exclaimed angrily at a rehearsal of "Don Giovanni": "Non capisco niente a questa maledetta musica!"[ 68 ] Against all this must be placed Rossini's charming answer when he was pressed to say which of his own operas he liked best: one person present suggested one, another the other, till at last Rossini exclaimed: "Vous voulez connaître celui de mes ouvrages que j'aime le mieux; eh bien, c'est 'Don Giovanni.'"[ 69 ] The fame of "Don Giovanni" did not long remain confined to the old world. When Garcia and his daughters were giving Italian operas at New York in 1825, at Da Ponte's suggestion they produced
