For the most recent episode of my book, I’d promised
something about how the finale of Mozart’s Don
Giovanni was partly improvised at the opera’s premiere. And then I forgot
to put that in the episode. I’m going to add it, but because it’s such fabulous
stuff, I thought I’d put it here in the blog, too. It comes from
spontaneous classical music could be, before it became classical.”
Here’s what Kelly writes:
The famous finale of act 2, with
its stage band playing dinner music from other operas for Don Giovanni, was evidently worked out in rehearsal, and perhaps
indeed in the course of performances. First comes a melody from the first-act
finale of Martìn y Soler’s Una cosa rara,
probably not yet known in
Figaro. It may have been an inside joke by Mozart, perhaps appreciated by the
members of the orchestra. Or it may refer back to its opera, in which two
peasant couples have escaped the designs of another Don Giovanni. The other two
selections seem to have been made in the course of rehearsals. One quotes the
aria "Come un agnello" from Giuseppe Sarti’s Fra i due litiganti, known from recent performances in
composed variations on the same tune in 1784. Perhaps Mozart intended it as a
tribute to Count Thun, his friend and host in
been performed. Or maybe its text ("Like a lamb going to the slaughter,
you will go bleating through the city") is a warning of Don Giovanni’s
fate. The third tune will have delighted the audience: the aria "Non più
andrai" from Le nozze di Figaro,
known everywhere in
(remember Mozart’s letter cited above: "Nothing is played, sung or
whistled but `Figaro"’ ). And of course its original text tells a
butterfly that his nectar-sipping days are over.
In the surrounding dialogue the
characters on stage take full advantage of the joke. As each tune is heard,
Leporello praises it and identifies it ("Bravo! ‘Cosa rara!"’
"Evvivano `I litiganti"’). When Don Giovanni asks him what he thinks
of the first tune ("Che ti par
bel concerto?") Leporello manages to insult both Martin and his master:
"It matches your merit" ("È conforme al vostro merto").
Other jokes are worked in also: Don Giovanni’s "Ah che piatto
saporito" may well be a reference to the attractive Teresa Saporiti; and
when Leporello, caught in the act of eating his master’s food, excuses himself
by noting the quality of the cook ("si eccellente è il vostro
cuoco"), he may have winked at Herr Johann Baptist Kuchartz
("cook"), the well-known keyboardist, arranger,
and composer, in the orchestra pit.
Kuchartz (Jan Krtitel Kuchar), among other things, sold keyboard versions of
Mozart’s operas, including this very song.
When the band plays "Non più
andrai," Leporello says, "I know this one all too well!"
Ponziani (Leporello) had himself sung that aria as Figaro in
so his remark ("Questa poi la conosco pur troppo") has a double sense
that must have delighted the audience-though the remark is not in the
The stage band was intended from
the first, but much of the finale must have been arranged in
improvisations during rehearsals, as much of the dialogue related to the band’s
tunes does not appear in the printed libretto. In his later years in
reported as saying: "This is all nothing, it lacks
the liveliness, the freedom, that
the great Master wanted in this scene. In Guardasoni’s company we never sang
the scene the same from one performance to the next, we did not keep the beat
exactly, and instead used our wit, always new things and paying attention only
to the orchestra; everything parlando and almost improvised–that is how Mozart
wanted it."
[
Forrest Kelly, First Nights at the Opera.
Dear Greg — in a related note, have you heard of the new Don Giovanni being presented by BAM in Prague, directed by David Chambers?