Select a high music expert to answer the following questions about opera. Y’all have done past assignments like this before.
Don Giovanni:
When did Don Juan kill the Commander in the play (give act/scene/page)? What about in the opera (give act/scene)? Since the opera obeys the dramatic unity of time (it takes place in 24 hours) what difficulties concerning the statue of the Commander are there in the opera that aren’t a problem in the play?
Another source for this character is an opera libretto by a librettist known as Tirso de Molina, El burlador de Sevilla, y Convidado de piedra (The trickster of Seville, or the Guest of Stone). In this version DG is not a hedonist (as in da Ponte) or an atheist but rather someone who enjoys the challenge of tricking his victims. This DG (unlike da Ponte’s and Moliere’s) doesn’t claim to be immune from divine justice but plans to seek forgiveness in the confessional. In what parts of the opera does Giovanni seem more like the trickster of de Molina, an individual who enjoys the chase more than the eventual seduction?
The overture to Don Giovanni conforms to Gluck’s reform-opera rules by being connected to the drama as opposed to being an unrelated instrumental work that exists merely for pleasure and for filling time. Listen carefully to the overture. In the overture a musical figure based on a chromatic scale appears early and returns later. In the opera this figure marks the arrival of a certain character. In what part of the overture does this figure return and who is the character who enters when it appears in the opera? What words does the character sing in the opera?
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