Inspired by the play by the Spanish playwright Tirso de Molina and Molière's Don Juan, Don Giovanni is one of Mozart's most accomplished works, and above all one of his richest and most musically complex.

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Through the themes of desire, transgression and punishment, the opera asks the great questions of the human condition, based on a libretto by Da Ponte. Mozart's music is among his most accomplished. If musicologists sometimes consider this work to be ‘the opera of operas’, it is also because it represents a successful transition between ancient scenic and musical forms and the emergence of modern musical drama.

L'HISTOIRE

Don Giovanni, an opera in two acts from 1787, evokes the dissolute life of a seducer and his punishment. The work is set mainly in Seville. For betraying his wife Donna Elvira, seducing and abandoning Donna Anna and killing her father, but also for defying moral laws, Don Giovanni is dragged down to hell by the statue of the Commander.

THE CHARACTERS

Don Giovanni, seductive gentleman, baritone
Leporello, Don Giovanni's valet, bass
Donna Elvira, Lady of Burgos in love with Don Giovanni, soprano
Donna Anna, Daughter of the Commander, soprano
Le Comandeur, Don Pedro, bass