The next scene introduces us to one of the personified reproaches of Don Juan’s better nature. As the Don and his man are plotting new adventures, a lady passes, in hat and feathers, with excited air, and, as they retreat into the shade to note her, she pours out her most musical complaint against the traitor who has played falsely with her heart. The introductory symphony or ritornel, in E flat major, by its bold and animated strain indicates the high-spirited and passionate nature now before us, whose song of ever constant though wronged love, to words that would fain threaten terrible revenge, commences the Terzetto, mainly solo, to which the mocking by-play of the Don and Leporello, accompanied by a mocking figure of the instruments, supplies the other two parts. As he steps up to offer consolation to the lady, he recognizes his own simple, loving, poor deserted mistress, Donna Elvira, and while the same mocking instrumental figure leaves the song hanging in the air, as it were, without any cadence or any close, he slips away and leaves the task of explanation to the disconcerted servant. There is an ardent, passionate yearning in this as in all of Elvira’s melodies, which climb high and are perhaps the most difficult in the opera. The character is seldom conceived truly by the actress. Interpreted by its music, its intention is distinct enough. Elvira is no half-crazed, foolish thing; but one of the highest moral elements in the personnel of the opera; next in dignity, at least, to Donna Anna. However she may appear in the libretto and in the common usage of the stage, Mozart in his music makes her the soul of ardent and devoted love and constancy, still fondly hoping in the deeper, better self of the man who has trifled with her; like a sweet, genuine ray of sun shine, always indicating to Don Juan a chance of escape from the dark labyrinthine fatality of crime in which he goes on involving himself; always offering him true love for false.
Let her not listen then (like the silly girl we commonly see upon the stage, half-magnetized out of a weak sorrow into a weaker involuntary yielding to the ludicrous) to the exquisitely comic appeal of Leporello, when the vain-glorious fellow unrolls his tremendous list of his master’s conquests among the fair sex, enumerating the countries, ranks, styles of beauty, etc. The melody of this “Catalogue Song” is altogether surpassing. It is the perfection of buffo, as we have before had the perfection of serious recitative. After naming the numbers for Italy, Germany, etc., when it comes to the climax (Elvira’s own land): Ma in Espagna mille e trè, [But in Spain one thousand and three,] it is ludicrously grave; the orchestra meanwhile has chopped the measure into short units, alternate instruments just touching different points of height and depth, till they seem at last to count it all up on the fingers, first downward in the tripping pizzicato scale of the violins, then upward in gruff confirmation in the basses. In the slow time, where it comes to the specification of the different qualities of beauty, the grande maëstosa, the piccina, etc., the melody is one of the most beautiful and pathetic that could be imagined. One wonders how Mozart could have expended such a wealth of melody upon so light a theme; it seems as lavish a disproportion of means to end, as when we read of travelers roasting their eggs in the cinders of Vesuvius. But such was the musical fullness and integrity of Mozart; the genial vein, once opened, would run only pure gold; and his melodies and harmonies are not merely proportioned to the specialities of the subject, but are at every moment moulded in the style and spirit of the whole work. Besides, the comedy consists here in the contrast of a pathetic melody with a grotesque thought. Moreover the whole thing is truer in the fact, that not only Leporello’s, but Don Juan’s own melodies, as indeed the very nature of music, seem mournfully to rebuke the desperado. In the most comic and most bacchanalian strains, the music saddens with a certain vague presentiment of the fearful dénouement of the drama.
The Don’s next adventure is the meeting of a gay group of peasants at a wedding festival, where he attempts to seduce away the pretty bride, Zerlina, whose naïve and delicious songs, right out of a simple, good, loving heart, a little coquettish withal, are among the purest gems of the piece, and have mingled their melody with the civilized world’s conceptions of truth and nature and the charm of innocence. Those of our readers who have enjoyed with us the privilege of hearing and seeing a worthy, indeed a perfect personation of Zerlina, by that refined and charming artist, Signora Bosio, will need no words to give them a just conception of the character, and of its music, which is as individual as that of Anna or Elvira. Suffice it to say, that the simplicity, the tenderness and the coquetry of this pretty peasant, have the natural refinement of a superior nature. Mozart must have been in love with the part. The rustic chorus opening this scene, in which the bridal pair lead off, is one of perfect simplicity, (Allegro, 6—8 time,) and yet inimitable beauty. The Duett, La ci darem la mano, in which Don Juan overcomes the hesitation of the dazzled, spell-bound girl, breathes the undoubted warmth of passion; few simple souls could be proof against such an eloquent confession. Indeed the sincerity of all this music is a great part of its charm; it has never the slightest symptom of any striving for effect, and yet it is consummate art; it flows directly out of the characters and situations and the dramatic tendency of the whole. The poor girl is rescued this time by the entrance of an experienced guardian angel, who sees through the case at once. It is Donna Elvira, who, just as she is tripping away with the fascinator to the gay, consenting tune of Andiam, (let us go,) snatches the bird from his hands. Her song of warning to the simple one, Ah! fuggi ’l traditor, is a strangely elaborate Handelian aria, so different in style from the rest of the opera that it is never performed. As if all things conspired to confound the traitor, Donna Anna and her lover also enter, (Zerlina having withdrawn,) and here ensues that wonderful Quartette, Non ti fidar, in which each voice-part is a character, a melody of a distinct genius, and all wrought into a perfect unity. Elvira warns Anna and Ottavio against confiding in this generous-looking Don, whose aid they have unwittingly bespoken in their search for the murderer of the first scene (namely himself;) Don Juan declares that she is crazy, and not to be minded; the others are divided between pity for her and respect for such a gentleman; and all these strands are twisted into one of the finest concerted pieces in all opera. It is one of those peculiar triumphs of opera which make it so much more dramatic than the spoken drama; for here you have four characters expressing themselves at once, with entire unity of effect, yet with the distinctest individuality. The music makes you instantly clairvoyant to the whole of them; you do not have to wait for one after the other to speak; there is a sort of song-transparency of all at once; the common chord of all their individualities is struck. Especially is this achieved in the concerted pieces, the quartettes, trios, and so forth, of Mozart, which are beyond comparison with most of those in the Italian opera of the day, since the harmony in them is not the mere coloring of one thought, but the interweaving of so many distinct individualities.
Zerlina is saved, but by arrangement with her protectors agrees to go up to the Don’s palace, whither Leporello has conducted the whole wedding party, and even coaxed along the jealous bridegroom. A scene ensues between Donna Anna and her lover. The orchestra, in a few startling and almost discordant shrieks, indicates the intense excitement of her mind, for, as Don Juan took his leave, she recognized the look and voice of one whom she had too much cause to remember; and in impassioned bursts of hurried recitative, alternating with the said spasmodic bits of instrumentation, she exclaims, Quegli è il carnefice del mio padre, (this man is my father’s murderer,) and in the same grandly lyric style, rising higher and higher, she tells Ottavio the story of her outrage. Having reached the climax, this magnificent recitative becomes melody, and completes itself in the sublime Aria, Or tu sai, “Now thou knowest who attempted my honor,” etc. There can be nothing greater, more Minerva-like in dignity and high expression of the soul of justice outraged, and at the same time full of all feminine tenderness and beauty, in the whole range of opera or drama. And it is Music, it is Mozart that has done it all. We have here the character of Donna Anna in its most sublime expression; a character that transcends mere personal relations, that bears a certain mystical relationship with the higher power beginning to be felt in the development of this human history. In this song she rises, as it were, to the dignity of an impersonation of the moral principle in the play, and this high sentiment of hers is like a foretaste of the coming fate and supernatural grandeur, which are to form the never to be forgotten finale of the piece. Elvira is entirely in the sphere of the personal; she loves Don Juan to the last, and like the simple good humanity that still appeals to him though still rejected. But Anna is superhuman and divine; she reveals the interworking of the Infinite in all these finite human affairs; to Heaven, rather than to Ottavio, is her appeal; and from beyond this life she looks to see the vindicator of her cause appear. The loftiness of the music just considered, and the stately trumpet-tones of the orchestra, which always herald the entrance of Donna Anna and her party, connect her unmistakably with the marvelous elements of the drama; she is Feeling prophesying Justice; she is Faith in the form of woman; and the singer who could perfectly present Donna Anna would be worthy to sing Handel’s song, “I know that my Redeemer liveth.”
From one extreme we pass to its opposite. In strongest possible contrast with the high moral passion of this last, is what now follows. We have a song embodying the very frenzied acme of Don Juan’s zest of sensual pleasure. He directs Leporello about the feast, and trolls off, like one possessed, his famous champagne song, Finch’an del vino, whose rapidity and glorious abandon are too much for almost all the baritones; those, in whose dragging utterance it does not become commonplace, are apt to give it with a swaggering glibness, and a coarseness that has nothing of the fine champagne enthusiasm about it. In this song and that last of Donna Anna’s the two electric poles, as it were, of the whole play, have met. And now for the pretty episode of peasant life again; the inimitably sweet, insinuating, loving song in which repentant little Zerlina seems to invite chastisement from her offended, jealous lover, Batti, batti, O bell’ Masetto, (beat me, beat me, dear Masetto!). With what soft tendrils of melody, enhanced by the delicious instrumentation, she steals around his senses and his heart! And to what unaffected rapture (to say nothing of a little coquettish triumph) the strain changes when he forgives her, as she knew he would! This seems a very simple song, but it is the perfection of art. O that Mozart could go into ecstasies with his own pet Zerlina, hearing Bosio sing this!
We have now reached the musical Finale of the first act, though there is much shifting of scenes and characters before the last grand ensemble, which is the ball in the Don’s palace. But these only suspend, to wonderfully enhance, the final stroke. We can only enumerate the delicious series of ever new and characteristic musical ideas preliminary to the feast: (1.) Masetto urging Zerlina to hide herself—how full of the bustle of approaching splendors is the music during this little hurried duett! (2.) The Don’s voice stimulating the peasants to the coming mirth, with their responsive chorus. (3.) Then his discovery of the shy bird and half reclaimal of her love, with his blank surprise (so perfectly depicted in the sudden modulation of the music) as he leads her off only to meet the watchful bridegroom: Masetto si, Masetto! (during all which the light twittering phrases of the accompaniment make the whole atmosphere instinct with joys expected.) (4.) Then, as the instruments suddenly change to a cautious, half-hushed, tip-toe melody, unflagging in its speed, yet in the minor mood, (for these have no festivity in their hearts that now come) the entrance of Donna Elvira, Donna Anna, and Don Ottavio, in black dominos, and masked to the outward eye, though each betrayed by a distinctive style of melody. (5.) Then the sounding (from within the house) of that stately minuett, a strain which everybody knows and loves, and still as fresh as when first written, here introduced as a mere foretaste of itself, and of the ball, and made the musical ground-work of lordly courtesy and hospitality to the salutations of Don Juan and Leporello, who appear above at the window, and invite the maskers in. (6.) The surpassing Trio, in which the three, lingering on the threshold, invoke Heaven’s protection to innocence ensnared. Can any other opera show such an exuberance of musical ideas in the same space? And it is all en passant, all incidental to what follows, to what now bursts instantly upon the view as the back scene is withdrawn, and you see all the crowd and splendor of the ball-room, and are transported by the indescribably rich Finale, that ever climbing, widening crescendo and accumulation of all musical effects, till the climax is reached in a general storm and inundation of harmony. The simple, gay, continuous six-eight melody, to which the whole brilliant spectacle moves at first, is the very soul of festivity. Suddenly there is a full chord in C from the whole orchestra, with trumpets, and a stately, march-like strain, preluding the entrance of the three in masks, with the lordly welcome of the Amphytrion. He will have no time lost, however, for into this one high hour he has concentrated all the delights and harmonies of sense—short, bright and strong be the blood-quickening chorus, Viva la liberta! and now let the dance go on. And now are crowded into a brief but most capacious moment, the reintroduction of the Minuett in a bolder key than before, to whose grave, deliberate measure the more elegant company begins to move in antique, solemn steps; then presently, commingling with the Minuett, but not disturbing it, two other tunes, to other rhythms, namely, a rustic contra-dance, and a most rapid waltz, inspiring the heels of the peasants; the droll attempts of Leporello to make Masetto dance, while his master has bespoken the arm and ear of the pretty bride, to win whom he has planned this whole array; the indignant observation of this game by Donna Anna, with difficulty moderated until due time by her companions; the piercing shriek of the music as Don Juan whirls Zerlina away out of the dance; the cry for aid; the general rush to the door whence the sounds proceed, and when it is broken in, the grotesque brief diversion of the Don dragging Leporello by the ear, and trying to fasten his own crime on him; the incredulous and accusing phrase, in which the voices of the trio, now unmasked, confront him successively in Canon style; and the out-bursting of the general tempest of wrath upon the exposed deceiver, heightened, too, by the sweeping wind and hissing lightnings of an actual physical storm that is supposed to be passing without. The strength of the accusing chorus is splendidly terrific, and like the rush of a whirlwind, where all the voices in unison swiftly traverse up and down several times the first five notes of the scale. But he of the dauntless will and the magnetic eye, with one sword awes back and penetrates the maddened mob, escaping with a loud laugh of defiance.
Our very slight and hasty sketch has already grown to considerable length, and yet we have examined only one act of the three, into which “Don Giovani” is usually divided in the performance. One act was enough to show (if that were all our object) how this opera wells up as from an exhaustless fountain of musical ideas, all of which are of the inspired, enduring quality; we have listened to materials enough already for some twenty of the fashionable operas of our day. We must glance more hastily at the remainder.
Act II. opens with one of those half humorous, half serious conversations between the Don and Leporello, which ever and anon relieve the story. The servant, stung by the ungrateful and outrageous conduct of his master in the ball-room explosion, announces his determination to quit him; but they are too essential to each other, and the Don soon coaxes, laughs, and bribes him out of that notion. This duett is in real Italian parlando style, a syllable to every note, quick and brief as it is comically expressive; for this enemy of woman’s peace has new business on hand; the unlucky night is not too far gone to try one more adventure. So here follows the summer warmth and beauty of the serenade scene under Donna Elvira’s window, who sits above there, pouring out her nightingale complainings under the stars, in a melody of ravishing sweetness and tenderness, forming the upper part of a Terzetto, in which the sotto voce dialogue of the Don and his man below grotesquely blends. He changes garments with Leporello, and lending his own voice, while Leporello gesticulates, in strains of feigned repentance and returning love, entices the too easily persuaded lady down into the arms of his counterfeit, while he takes up his guitar to serenade, not Elvira, but Elvira’s maid, now that the field is clear, in that most graceful little serenading air, which seems so easy and so off-hand, with its light arpeggio accompaniment by violins alone: Deh vieni alla finestra. But the fortunate stars of our all-seducing hero seem this night to have forsaken him; again his business is balked. Mirth and melody, fun and sentiment are strangely mingled in this scene, and, indeed, in this whole act. The serenade gets finished; the tree, as it were, is climbed; but before the fruit can be gathered, the game is interrupted by Masetto and the peasants armed, hot from the ball-room scene, in search of the splendid scoundrel. Masetto gets the worst of it; and here we have one of the world’s three or four very choicest and purest gems of melody, Zerlina’s exquisitely tender and comforting song to her poor, bruised, and beaten bridegroom, Vedrai carino; so beautifully simple, in the homely key of C natural; so innocently voluptuous; so full of blissful love; so like the balsam (un certo balsamo) of which she hints with fond and arch significance! And as she makes him place his hand upon her heart at the words, sentilo battere, (feel it beat,) you seem to hear its glad and honest beating in the music. We cannot forbear inserting here the following interpretation of this song, which we have read since our analysis of the opera was made. It is from the pen of an intelligent Russian gentleman, who has written in French and German an admirable Life of Mozart, with a critical examination of his works. We translate from the German copy:
“Vedrai Carino is, like so many pieces of our opera, super-dramatic music. When we hear it, we forget the text, we forget the person. There is no longer any Zerlina or Masetto. Something infinite, absolute, and verily divine announces itself to the soul. Is it perhaps nothing but love, represented under one of the countless modifications by which it is distinguished in each individual, according to the laws of his nature, and the peculiar vicissitudes of his fortune? No; the soul feels rather a direct effluence of the principle itself, from which all youth, all love, all joy, and every vital reproduction flows. The genius of the Spring’s metamorphoses, he namely, whom the old theosophists called Eros, who disembroiled chaos, who fructified germs and married hearts; this genius speaks to us in this music, as he has so often spoken in the murmurings of the brook that has escaped its icy prison, in the rustling of the young leaves, in the melodious songs of the nightingale, in the balmy odors which pervade the eloquent and inspiring stillness of a May night. Mozart had listened to and firmly held this ground-accord of this universal harmony; he arranged it for a soprano voice with orchestral accompaniment, and made of it the nuptial air of a young bride. Zerlina sings, surrounded by the shadows of the marriage night, while just about to cross the threshold, at which virginity pauses with prayer and trembling, expecting the confirmation of the holy title of wife. In this place the Aria becomes a genuine scena of love, the source of life and of eternal rejuvenescence for all nature—of love, the spring-time of souls, and the most unstinted revelation of the all-goodness of the Creator. It is a marriage-song for all that loves, conceived in the same spirit with the ‘Ode to Joy’ by Schiller, allowing for the difference of tone and style between a Dithyrambic and an Eclogue. The theme, the image of the purest bliss, betrays none the less that inexplicable and seldom justified exaltation, which, in the fairest poetic hours of our existence, leads us to that unknown good whereof all other goods of earth are only shadows and foretastes. A rhythm without marked accent; a harmony without dissonances; a modulation which rests in the Tonic, and forgets itself, as if held fast there by a magic spell; a melody which cannot separate itself from its ineffaceable motiv; this tranquil rapture, this soft ecstasy, fill out the first half of the air. After the pause, hosts of nightingales begin to sing in chorus in the orchestra, while the voice, with exquisite monotony, murmurs, Sentilo battere, toccami quà. Then the same words are again uttered with the expression of passion; the heart of the young woman beats stronger and stronger; the sighs of the orchestra are redoubled, and the last vocal phrase, which bears the impress of chaste devotion, shows us the wife as she sinks softly upon the bosom of her husband. Mozart seems to have anticipated the desire of the ear, in that he lets the orchestra repeat the whole motiv and the enchanting final phrases once again. He knew that the piece would be found too short, as it actually is the case.”
Good-night, then, to this happy couple, whom we leave, to trace the sequel of the comic vein just opened in that ‘Sartor’-ian exchange of personality between the master and the servant; but also at the same to receive still more distinct and solemn intimations (all the more significant for this very contrast of the comic) of the supernatural reaction that is preparing soon to burst upon the head of the magnificent libertine and outlaw. The Sextette which now follows is altogether unique and unrivaled among concerted pieces in opera. The music of this Sextette covers such an ever-shifting variety of action, and so much of a scene, that one may hear it once without thinking of its wealth and admirable structure as music. Yet for every point in all this action, and for all shades of relation between the persons, as well as for each separate personality, there is a correspondence in the music. The scene has changed to a bujo loco, or dark place, (the libretto says, a porch to Donna Anna’s palace.) First appear the counterfeit Giovanni and Elvira, who is too happy to walk with him to the end of the world, if need be; while he, (Leporello,) tired of imitating his master’s voice, is groping about to find an exit. In an Andante melody, in the same key, and of a kindred character with that by which we first knew her (Ah! chi mi dice mai,) she utters her fear of being left alone in this bujo loco. Just as her companion finds the door, the groping, cautious music brightens into the bold key and trumpet-style which always heralds Anna and Ottavio, who enter amid blaze of torches. Sweet is the consoling appeal of the tenore to his grief-stricken Anna, whose response, less fiery and commanding, but not less sublimely spiritual than her last great solo, even hints of death as the only solution of life’s riddle for her. Meanwhile the first two, who have lurked unnoticed, are just making good their exit, when Zerlina and Masetto appear, who thinks that now he has the briccone at his mercy; the bluster of Masetto, the surprise of Anna and Ottavio at the sight of the supposed Giovanni, the grotesque, crouching plea of the valet, the intercession of still deceived Elvira for “her husband,” then their recognition of her, then a new brandishing of Masetto’s club, and then the ass throwing off the lion’s skin, and begging mercy, all are made thrice expressive by the music, which varies instinctively each moment, and yet ceases not to weave the unitary complex whole. At last all the six voices join in a swift and wind-like Allegro, in which Anna’s voice takes the highest and most florid part, Zerlina’s the second, Elvira’s the third, and so on, and in which there is now and then a wild Æolian-harp-like passage of harmony, which seems the fore-feeling of the higher powers which henceforth are to take part in the drama.