Bad Day on the Seville Streets
by Douglas Messerli
Lorenzo Da
Ponte (libretto), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (composer) Don Giovanni / Los Angeles, LAOpera at
the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Sunday, September 30,
matinee
Twice during the long day on the road,
however, Giovanni does return to his palatial estate, the first time to join in
a drunken party he has ordered up so
that he might get the men out of the way in order to bed Zerlina. Yet the sober
if oafishly jealous Masetto stands in his way, while Zerlina herself—if at first
all too ready to surrender to Giovanni’s seductions—remains steadfast in her
love for Masetto.
Again Giovanni takes to the street, this
time, dressed as his servant Leporello, pretending to participate in a mad chase
while really trying to save his own life. As the sun begins to sink, we still
find him in a public space, this time in the cemetery where he encounters the
Commendatore’s horrifying talking statue whom he flippantly invites to
dinner.
While Giovanni is at risk for most of day
upon the streets, it is in his own home, as he sits down for a lonely
dinner—even now torturing Leporello—where he is finally “captured” and brought
to justice through the visitation of the Commendatore’s
figuration.
Hell, strangely enough (at least in the
LAOpera version, based on the Lyric Opera of Chicago production) manifests
itself in Giovanni’s own dining room, not in the public square, suggesting that
it is Giovanni’s own private hell, not a spectacle of public proportions; only
Leporello observes this event .
Giovanni’s punishment, however, has
resulted from all his public crimes,
from his inability to remain alone but for but a few moments each day. It is
almost as if Giovanni will not even sleep, so determined is he to seek out and
find new prey. If the final show-down occurs out of the public eye, it is only
because Giovanni is most vulnerable in his own house, since it is public
transgressions that truly define who he is. A villainous gunslinger cannot play
that role in a lonely farmhouse, just as a lascivious seducer cannot act out his
identity in an empty estate. If the particular day Mozart and Da Ponte show us
is the worst day of Giovanni’s life, it is—except for his murder of the
Commendatore and his inability to seduce anyone—not much different from any
other day; for Giovanni is a man doomed to roam Seville’s public streets and
squares instead of enjoying the private pleasures of a wealthy
life.
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