5 - Wenzel Mihule and Don Giovanni

Summary

This chapter explores how post–World War II nationalism affected the understanding of the transnational dissemination of Don Giovanni in late eighteenth-century Central Europe. The chapter traces one of the earliest German adaptations of Don Giovanni, created in Prague in 1790–91 for the company of Wenzel Mihule. This adaptation was later used in many South German cities (such as Nuremberg), in Saxony (Leipzig and Dresden), the Viennese Wiednertheater, and in many places in Bohemia, Moravia, and Slovakia. The adaptation was largely overlooked by previous studies of Don Giovanni reception because after 1945, both Czech scholars in the newly de-Germanized Bohemia and Austro-German scholars were not interested in researching German culture in what after the forced resettlement of the German population became predominantly Slavic regions.