Mozart and Don Giovanni

Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus (Gottlieb) Mozart was born in 1756 in Salzburg to Leopold and Anna Mozart. His father, Leopold, was a very talented violin master of the archbishop of Salzburg. However, soon after his birth, Mozart would out perform is father in every musical aspect. He was considered a wunderkind, or child prodigy, and wrote his first piece of music at the age of 5. In A Life in Letters, it is very apparent that Leopold is very envious or jealous of his son because Leopold would teach Mozart, however everything that Mozart would surpass everything that Leopold taught him. As a result of his envy, Leopold stopped composing and working musically all together. Within that same year, he would start touring and playing his own original works. At the time, there was no public marketplace for music and it was difficult for Mozart to make money, thus he relied on a patron to pay him for creations of symphonies, orchestras, and operas. In order to scramble for patronage, he moved out of Salzburg to Vienna in 1781, where there is a greater interest and need for music due to its residence of the Habsburg monarchy. He receives minor patronage by the Habsburgs, but most of his patronage and income came from the nobility and aristocrats of Vienna. Mozart was also very devoted and involved with the Free Masons and became an official member in 1784.
Don Giovanni
Mozart split his time between writing music compositions and operas. We were fortunate enough to watch one of Mozart’s operas, Don Giovanni. Don Giovanni is an opera about a womanizer, who tries to get with all the women around him; however, he is wanted for murdering the Commendatore, Donna Anna’s father. In the process of trying to conceal his identity to keep from being avenged by Donna Anna’s fiancé, Don Ottavio, Don Giovanni tries to get with all kinds of women: servants, single women, taken women, anyone he can get his hands on. He even goes as far as to dress up as his servant, Leporello, to get with Zerlina’s servant. Through all of his womanizing and murderous ways, he makes many enemies who want him dead and has to do a lot of appeasing and convincing to keep his life. None of the people who want him dead can successfully kill him, but strangely in the end, Don Giovanni gets dragged down into hell by the statue of the Commendatore.
I felt that the version of the opera we saw was very different from that of the original by Mozart. The Don Giovanni we saw was a modern interpretation of the original. The same value, idea, and synopsis of the story are carried out, but in a very different way it is in the original. The original is set in an Italian city and the modern version it is set in a hotel. It was very interesting to hear the 18th century opera music being sung on hotel set in modern day wardrobe; however it was nice to see that in the scene in which Don Giovanni throws a ballroom party for Zerlina and Masetto, they are all dressed appropriate to the time period of the original piece. The modern adaptation also got sort of strange in the end, when the director used his poetic license to carry out the end of the play. I will admit that the original libretto is strange and very unrealistic when the statue of the Commendatore drags Don Giovanni into hell with him; however, the scene in which Don Giovanni grows old and dines with a bunch of mannequins and loses his mind before he is eventually slashed to death in a glass box was even more unrealistic. It was hard for me to draw parallels between the two versions of the opera in that instance. All in all the opera was a great experience. It was fun to be able to dress up and enjoy something considered to be very “high society.” I read in the Lonely Planet guide that the Viennese are very proper and concerned with their status and thus always jump at the chance to present themselves in a very aristocratic manner. However, even though I thought the people at the opera dressed nice, it was not anything exceptional. In fact I thought, as a whole, our group was dressed in a more presentable manner than most of the Viennese. Also paying 5.50 Euro for a tiny glass of champagne was a bit ridiculous. The opera was a very bourgeois event and the people who come out almost remind me of the attitudes of those Ringstrasse barons that felt the need to act in an aristocratic manner in order to prove their wealth and status.