Sarasota Opera House - Don Giovanni 

This season, Mozart’s Don Giovanni returns to Sarasota Opera for the first time in twelve years. The premiere falls on February 25 and will feature David Weigel in the role of Don Giovanni, returning after a successful run in both Les pêcheurs de perles and Tosca in 2022. In the pit will be Marcello Cormio, conducting the Sarasota Opera Orchestra for the seventh season. His previous engagements here have included Mozart and the librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte’s two other collaborations, The Marriage of Figaro and Così fan tutte. Clearly, Cormio has an affinity with the music of Mozart.

Don Giovanni is a hugely popular opera, but re-watching it recently I was struck by how ambiguous it is. Officially, it’s referred to as a “dramma giocoso,” which in English translates to something like a “playful drama.” That’s an interesting concept. What exactly does that description mean, and how does Don Giovanni fit into that genre?

Ambiguity is at the very heart of the character of Don Giovanni. The fictional figure of Don Giovanni was already well known before Mozart and Da Ponte’s opera. He was almost a legend. The first written version of his story, from 1616, by the Spanish playwright Tirso de Molina, was very much a moral tale in which Don Giovanni appeared as an evil character who deserved to be punished. But as the story became popularized, comic elements started to creep in. The character of the servant, Leporello, is straight out of commedia dell-arte. So already there was an ambivalence there.