"Don Juan" possesses the universality of a work of true genius. Its characters are recognizable as types, and its human nature belongs to no period, but to all time. It is uncommon in ideas and unconventional in treatment. Even Lorenzo da Ponte (born at Ceneda, Italy, March 10, 1749, died at New York, August 17, 1838) did something original when he wrote the book, for he gave us an opera without a hero. Don Juan is anything but a hero, and one hardly feels inclined to accept the imposing ghost of the Commendator as one. Don Octavio is a very estimable person, and is ever ready with his good advice, but it is not of such stuff as he that heroes are made; and as for Leporello, he is the prince of cowards. Indeed, so strong is the comedy element in "Don Juan," so fine and faithful the character painting, so significant the exposition of human weakness and folly, that despite the fatal ending of the work, it would require no great ingenuity of argument to establish it as one of the purest and loftiest specimens of true comic opera.
The nobility of its music does not make this classification absurd, for let us remember that in the greatest of all comic music dramas, "Die Meistersinger," the music is second to none in loftiness of character, beauty of melody, dignity of color, and splendor of instrumental treatment. Mozart's biographer, Jahn, recognizes the presence of the true comedy spirit in Da Ponte's book when he says: "He has endowed his characters with the easy, pleasure-loving spirit of the time; and the sensual frivolity of life at Venice or Vienna is mirrored in every page of his 'Don Giovanni.'" He says further that the librettist furnished the composer with "a number of musically effective situations, in which the elements of tragedy and comedy, of horror and merriment, meet and mingle together. This curious intermixture of ground tones, which seldom allows expression to any one pure and unalloyed mood, is the special characteristic of the opera. Mozart grasped the unity of these contrasts lying deep in human nature and expressed them so harmoniously as to open a new province to his art, for the development of which its mightiest forces were henceforward to be concentrated."
Tempting, however, as the comic aspect of Mozart's opera is, we must not lose sight of the fact that the work has a serious purpose. Don Juan, bold and unscrupulous as he is, fails in every attempt, and finally meets with utter discomfiture and destruction. There is something here of the spirit of the old Greek tragedy, which always voiced a deep moral truth. After all, there is a term which fits "Don Juan" and roundly describes it. One of the names given to the lyric drama of Italy, when it was brought forth by Jacopo Peri and his associates, was Tragicomedia. Where is there today a nobler specimen of Tragicomedia than the "Don Juan" of Mozart?
As for the music of the opera, nothing better has ever been said about it than what Schink wrote in the Dramaturgische Monate in 1790. He says: "How can this music, so full of force, majesty, and grandeur, be expected to please the lovers of ordinary opera, who bring their ears to the theatre with them, but leave their hearts at home?... His music has been profoundly felt and thought out in its relation to the characters, situations, and sentiments of his personages. It is a study in language, treated musically.
"He never decks out his songs with unnecessary and meaningless passages. That is the way in which expression is banished from music; expression consisting not in particular words, but in the skilful and natural combination of sounds as a medium of real emotion. Of this method of expression Mozart is a consummate master. Each sound which he produces has its origin in emotion and overflows with it."
This last sentence of Schink's is charged with import. One who studies the music of "Don Juan" carefully must be convinced of the truth of the critic's view. If it is true, however, it proclaims the presence of the essential elements of musical romanticism in this truly classic opera. To some extent what we call romanticism has always been present in art music, while it was and is the vital principle of folk tunes. It was when Weber united to the science and culture of musical art the folk lore and folk melody in which were voiced the poetic imaginations of a people that romanticism threw aside the shackles of tradition and became the ruling element in the tone art.
Mozart was not an iconoclast. He made no new forms; he destroyed no old ones. But proceeding on the principle subsequently enunciated by Schumann, that "mastery of form leads talent to ever increasing freedom," he absorbed all extant forms. There is a saying that if you wish to become an astronomer you must make mathematics your slave. Mozart seemed to feel that if he wished to become a composer he must make form his slave. As a mere child he made himself a consummate contrapuntal scholar. In a word, he became literally a master of form.
When, therefore, he came to the composition of his wonderful operas, he saw no necessity for the creation of new forms, because he did not feel the shackles of the old ones. To him they were chains of roses, and the impulse had not come which set all composers thundering against the restrictive barriers of mere formalism. With Mozart there was no such thing as mere formalism; and if there is any lesson which every repetition of "Don Juan" forces home upon us with vital force, it is that fashion is no restraint on genius. Mozart accepted the material of Italian opera as he found it. But he filled the old forms with a new spirit. In the process of the years the spirit waxed too mighty for the old body and took its flight into the infinite regions of free, untrammelled expression. Mozart stood upon the boundary of the promised land; Beethoven and Weber strode boldly across the border; Wagner feasted upon the milk and the honey.