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The Traditions of Don Juan Plays and Comic Operas

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 1980

Nino Pirrotta
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Extract

Beethoven's sharp criticism of Mozart's Don Giovanni was an expression of uncompromising moral and artistic standards. One wonders, however, to what extent it also reflected an aristocratic Viennese bias against a plot disreputable per se, which in addition had been handled by a librettist and a composer neither of whom had really achieved an approved social status in the capital of the Habsburg Empire.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 107 , 1980 , pp. 60 - 70
Copyright
Copyright © 1982 The Royal Musical Association and the Authors

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References

NOTES

1 See Ademollo, Alessandro, I teatri di Roma nel secolo decimosettimo (Rome, 1888), 111–13; Ademollo did not know the title of the opera. The libretto by Filippo Acciaiuoli, preserved in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Rome, is reprinted in Giovanni Macchia, Vita avventure e morte di Don Giovanni (2nd edn, Turin, 1978), 207–99.Google Scholar

2 Ademollo, op. cit., 113. Melani's score is preserved in the Fondo Chigi of the Vatican Library.Google Scholar

3 I have been able to use a microfilm of the libretto existing at the University Library in Brünn, courtesy of Dr Wolfgang Plath and Dr Rudolph Angermüller. A facsimile of the title-page, cast and preface is given by Stefan Kunze, Don Giovanni vor Mozart (Munich, 1972), 26–7.Google Scholar

4 Erich H. Müller, Angelo und Pietro Mingotti (Dresden, 1917); Paul Nettl, ‘Mingotti, Pietro e Angelo’, in Enciclopedia dello Spettacolo, vii (Rome, 1960), cols. 614–16.Google Scholar

5 See Dizionario degli italiani, v (Rome, 1963), sub voce.Google Scholar

6 For the singers Giuseppe Alberti, Laura Bambini, Domenico Battaglini, Rosa Cardini and Chiara Orlandi see Wiel, Taddeo, I teatri veneziani nel Settecento (Venezia, 1897), passim. I find no information about Bartolomeo Cajo and Cecilia Monti, who also sang in the intermezzi.Google Scholar

7 No score is available. A list of the extant libretti and a summary of the plot are given by Kunze, op. cit., 74–6.Google Scholar

8 About Righini's further activities see Hans Engel's article in Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, xi (Kassel, 1963), 515–19.Google Scholar

9 Kunze, op. at., 76–8. I find no evidence of a performance in Venice in 1784.Google Scholar

10 Nicola Mangini, I teatri di Venezia (Milan, 1973), 98–104.Google Scholar

11 Wiel, op. cit., 331. For the Caligari brothers see Brunelli, Bruno, I teaitri di Padova (Padua, 1921), passim.Google Scholar

12 See Monaco, Vanda, Giambattista Lorenzi e la commedia per musica (Naples, 1968), where the text of Il convitato is reprinted from a later source somewhat diverging from the original 1783 libretto. A summary of the plot is given by Kunze, op. cit., 78–82. Celeste Coltellini, daughter of the librettist Marco who succeeded Metastasio in Vienna in 1764, started her singing career in Milan and Venice, and was much applauded in Naples, where she was heard in 1783 by the emperor Joseph II. From 1785 to 1790 she sang also in Vienna; in 1792 she retired to become the wife of a Swiss banker.Google Scholar

13 See Einstein, Alfred, Mozart (London, 1945), 428.Google Scholar

14 The libretto was derived from Lorenzi's text, with the major alteration of Pulcinella being replaced by the servant Ficcanaso, who speaks the Tuscan language. See Kunze, op. cit., 87–90.Google Scholar

15 A summary of the plot is given by Kunze, op. cit., 83–7.Google Scholar

16 Wiel, op. cit., 403.Google Scholar

17 Gazzaniga, G., Don Giovanni, ed. by Stefan Kunze (Bärenreiter Verlag, Kassel).Google Scholar

18 See Chrysander, K. F. F., ‘Die Oper Don Giovanni von Gazzaniga und von Mozart’, Vierteljahrschrift für Musikwissenschaft, iv (1888), 351–435; and Edward J. Dent, Mozart's Operas (2nd edn., London, 1947) (the chapters on Don Giovanni). Kunze, op. cit., is essentially focussed on Gazzaniga's work.Google Scholar

19 More detail is given by Dent, op. cit., 129–30. Kunze, op. cit., 140–58 gives the full text, followed (pp. 159–204) by the text of Don Giovanni o sia Il convitato di pietra as Act 2.Google Scholar

20 Wiel, op. cit., 309–10.Google Scholar

21 This was L'impresario in angustie ed Il convitato di pietra, given at La Scala in Milan in the fall of 1789. A number of such libretti are included among those listed by Kunze, op. cit., 129–39.Google Scholar

22 Mozart seems to have derived from its score the theme of the variations in the D minor Quartet, K421, the fandango in Act 3 of Figaro and the use of trombones for the statue in Don Giovanni.Google Scholar

23 Einstein, op. cit., 433.Google Scholar

24 Ibid., 434.Google Scholar

25 The Italian text of the preface is given in L. da Ponte, Tre libretti per Mozart, ed. by P. Lecaldano (Milan, 1956), 53, a translation (somewhat diverging from mine) in Einstein, op. cit., 430.Google Scholar

26 Most likely it was used as a jargon expression by theatre people, but even of this we have scant evidence, but for Mozart's listing of Don Giovanni as an opera buffa.Google Scholar

27 Wiel, op. cit., nos. 895–6 (1779), 920 (1781), 932 (1782) and 1026 (1788).Google Scholar

28 Extensive samples are given by Michele Scherillo, L'opera buffa napolitana (Milan, 1917).Google Scholar

29 Einstein, op. cit., 414.Google Scholar

30 Ibid., 425–28.Google Scholar

31 Dent, E. J., ‘Ensembles and Finales in 18th-Century Italian Opera’, Sammelbände der internationalen Musikgesellschaft, xi (1909–10) and xii (1910–11).Google Scholar

32 These were Domenico Madrigali in Caligari's opera (1777) and Francesco Morella in Gardi's (1787).Google Scholar

33 See the article by Fedele D'Amico in Enciclopedia dello Spettacolo, ii (Rome, 1954), cols. 28–9.Google Scholar