To which the demons answer: "Mai!"[ 94 ]
This extravaganza was extraordinarily successful. In 1673 a second version, with additions and new scenery ("Aggiunta al Convitato di Pietra"), was announced.[ 95 ] The new Italian company of the Duke of Orleans replaced the improvised "Convitato di Pietra" upon the stage in 1717, and it was revived in 1743.[ 96 ] This gave rise to a dispute with the French actors, who were not willing to renounce their claim to so taking a piece.[ 97 ] Dorimon first produced a translation of Giliberti's piece with the title of "Le Festin de Pierre,[ 98 ] ou le Fils Criminel," at Lyons in 1658, when DON GIOVANNI. Louis XIV. met the Princess of Savoy there, and it was performed again at the Théätre de la Rue des Quatre Vents, in Paris, during 1661. But De Villiers had been beforehand with him here, having produced his tragi-comédie with the same title and almost verbal identity in 1659 at the theatre of the Hötel de Bourgogne.[ 99 ] Don Juan's afflicted father, exposed to the insolence of his son and the mockery of the servant, appears quite at the beginning of the piece. Afterwards Don Juan changes clothes with his servant Philippin in order to elude justice, robs a monk of his cowl, and in this disguise slays Don Philippo (Ottavio), the lover of Amarillis (Donna Anna). After the Commandant has supped with him and invited him, Don Juan again seduces a newly married woman, and then repairs to the chapel, where he is struck by lightning as he sits at table.
Molière did not neglect so promising a subject for the use of his company, and his "Don Juan, ou le Festin de Pierre" was first performed at the Palais-Royal on February 15, 1665. In contrast with the buffoonery of the Italians he has tried to raise the subject into the sphere of genuine comedy, and has thereby obliterated the last trace of the national-historical character of the drama in its Spanish form. Both sensual passion and chivalric boldness have disappeared. Molière's "Don Juan" is a cold-blooded egotist in his love and his want of faith, an enlightened rationalist, even when preserving his honour as a cavalier with personal bravery; his servant Sganarelle reasons as morally as his master immorally, but is quite as great an egotist, and a coward into the bargain. The striking situations, in which the original was so rich, are either merely related, as in the case of the seduction of Donna Anna and the murder of the Commenda-tore, or they have lost all their lively colouring by a new turn, as in the case of the adventures with the fisher-girl and the peasant; everything that might shock or injure the MOLIÈRE'S "FESTIN DE PIERRE." refined tone of comedy was omitted. On the other hand, the interests of morality required that every opportunity for repentance and amendment should be given to Don Juan; the more he is preached at from every quarter, the more obstinate he becomes in his evil courses. The truthfulness of psychological development thus striven after makes the catastrophe all the more glaringly absurd; such a sinner as this could not be carried off by a ghost. As a compromise, Molière makes Don Juan to be warned by a spirit in the form of a woman, who is transformed into an appearance of Time with his scythe; this was an allegory quite after the taste of the time, and rendered the marble guest a superfluity. Some of the situations, such as the adventure in the country, or the scene with the merchant, are excellently rendered, and delicate traits of characterisation are always to be found; in fact, the better a point is, the less it is found to have to do with the original "Don Juan." Molière's "Don Juan" was not printed during his life, and was only played fifteen times. A versified adaptation of it by Thomas Corneille, given in 1677, was well received, and kept the stage until 1847, when Molière's comedy was again substituted.[ 100 ]
Incited by Molière's example, Goldoni produced the "mauvaise pièce espagnole," which he could not contemplate without horror, at Venice in 1736, in the worthier form of a regular comedy entitled "Don Giovanni Tenorio, ossia il Dissoluto":—
In the first act, Donna Anna obeys her father against her will, and is betrothed to Don Ottavio. The second act shows Elisa, a peasant girl, taking leave of her lover Carino. Immediately after Don Juan appears, plundered by robbers, and gains her favour. Carino surprises them bidding farewell, but Elisa appeases his jealousy. Isabella, who has been deserted by Don Juan in Naples, follows him disguised as a man. In the third act she enters Seville with Ottavio, whom she has delivered from the hands of robbers on the way hither. When Donna Anna discovers her sex, she makes it the excuse for renouncing Ottavio's hand. Isabella, meeting Don Juan, forces him to fight with her; but, refusing from shame to give the standers-by any account of herself, she is pronounced by Don Juan to be a maniac. Elisa also DON GIOVANNI. pursues Don Juan, but he is warned against her by Carino, to whom she has been faithless. Don Juan declares himself ready to give her up, but Carino will have none of her. In the fourth act, Don Juan makes declaration of love to Donna Anna, who is not unfavourably disposed towards him, but refers him to her father for consent. He seeks, however, with drawn sword to gain her favour on the spot; she calls for help; her father hastens in, and is slain by Don Juan, who then escapes. It is resolved to pursue him and to seek redress against him from the King. In the fifth act Elisa promises to liberate him, having relatives among the guards, if he will marry her. Isabella interposes and renews her challenge to him to fight. Donna Anna, in mourning robes, calls for vengeance, but Don Juan displays so much passion for her that she relents and pardons him. Thereupon comes a letter from the King of Naples, demanding Don Juan's punishment, and disclosing Isabella's secret. Don Juan, seeing himself hopelessly lost, beseeches Carino to slay him. A thunderbolt from the mausoleum of the murdered Commendatore strikes him dead.
Goldoni asserts[ 101 ] that the public were astonished at first, and did not know "Ce que voulait dire cet air de noblesse que l'auteur avait donné à une ancienne bouffonnerie." But it soon became known that the coquettish Elisa was an actual portrait of the actress, Elizabeth Passalacqua, who played the part, and that Goldoni had chosen this way of being revenged on her for bestowing her favours simultaneously on him and on the actor Vitalba. This roused interest in the piece, and convinced people "que le comique raisonné était préférable au comique trivial." Rosimond looked at the subject from quite another point of view in his tragi-comédie "Le Festin de Pierre, ou l'Athéiste Foudroyé," produced in 1669 at the Théätre du Marais. This theatre was then noted for its brilliant decoration and spectacle pieces, which often necessitated high prices of admission. Such a piece was this of Rosimond's, and he had been careful to lay the plot in heathen times, that his atheism might vaunt itself with impunity.[ 102 ] Again, in 1746, "Le Grand Festin de Pierre" was given in Paris as a pantomime,[ 103 ] and has always been popular on village and marionette stages.
DON JUAN IN ENGLAND AND GERMANY.
In England also "Don Juan" was put on the stage at about the same time. Whether in his "Libertine Destroyed," which was produced in 1676, Thomas Shadwell followed the Spanish original or the French or Italian version, I cannot pretend to determine. The piece was very successful, but Don Juan's villainy was so dreadful, and the piece altogether so horrible, "as to render it little less than impiety to represent it on the stage."[ 104 ] In 1725 Antonio de Zamora, Chamberlain to King Philip V. of Spain, adapted the same subject under the title, "Non hay deuda que no se pague y convi-dado de piedra." "This adaptation, displaying much talent and skill, is cast almost in the same form as the opera; the earlier adventures of Don Juan in Naples are omitted, and Zamora, like the author of the libretto, begins with the murder of the Commandant."[ 105 ] In Germany, "Don Juan, oder das Steinerne Gastmahl," belonged to the standing repertory of the improvising actor from the beginning of the eighteenth century. Prehauser, the celebrated buffoon of the Vienna Theatre, made his first dramatic attempt in 1716 as Don Philippo in the "Steinerne Gastmahl."[ 106 ] Schroder appeared in Hamburg, in 1766, as Sganarell in "Don Juan," and "surpassed all expectation."[ 107 ] This may have been a version of Molière's "Don Juan," but as early as 1746 an afterpiece entitled "Don Juan" was on the repertory of Ackermann's Company,[ 108 ] and in 1769 the pantomime ballet of "Don Juan" was given by them.[ 109 ] At Vienna, up to 1772, an improvised "Steinerne Gastmahl" was regularly given during the octave of All Souls;[ 110 ] a proof that Don Juan's dissolute life was contemplated with pleasure, and that morality was considered as abundantly vindicated by his being carried off by the devil after a long penitential DON GIOVANNI. speech.[ 111 ] The traditions of this burlesque degenerate into a mere puppet-show. "Hanswurst" becomes the chief personage, and Don Juan's love adventures are made subservient to his deeds of blood; both the names and situations point to the French version of the Italian piece as the principal source, but many additions have been made, and these, for the most part, not happy ones.[ 112 ]
It was in Paris that the first attempt was made to treat "Don Juan" operatically. In the year 1713, Le Tellier produced "au jeu d'Octave," a comic opera "Le Festin de Pierre," in three acts, and "en vaudevilles sans prose" at the Théätre de la Foire Saint-Germain.[ 113 ] It was well received, but exception being taken to the representation of hell at the conclusion of the opera, it was suppressed; but a few days after, we are told, "Le magistrat, mieux informé, révoqua cette sentence."[ 114 ] The piece followed the old lines, only a few new jokes were introduced; and the language of the couplets, judging by the specimens which are given, must have been tolerably free.
A ballet of "Don Juan," with music by Gluck, was performed in Vienna in 1761.[ 115 ] The programme indicates four divisions, each of them containing an important situation, worked out and enlivened by means of different dances.