100 Great Operas and Their Stories: Act-By-Act Synopses (17 page)

The first of the anecdotes is told in the entertaining memoirs of the librettist Da Ponte (no mean rake himself). Describing the few weeks it took him to turn out this libretto, along with two others, he wrote:

“I sat down at my writing table and stayed there for twelve hours on end, with a little bottle of Tokay on my right hand, an inkstand in the middle, and a box of Seville tobacco on the left. A beautiful maiden of sixteen was living in my house with her mother, who looked after the household. (I should have wished to love her only as a daughter—but—) She came into my room whenever I rang the bell, which in truth was fairly often, and particularly when my inspiration seemed to cool. She brought me now a biscuit, now a cup of coffee, or again nothing but her own lovely face, always gay, always smiling, and made precisely to inspire poetic fancy and brilliant ideas.”

The other anecdote concerns the composer’s behavior at one of the rehearsals. Mozart was dissatisfied with the scream given by Zerlina when, at the ball, the Don is supposed to be making improper advances to her. He thereupon undertook to make the improper advances himself by slipping behind her and, at the precisely right moment, administering a sharp pinch. He expressed himself as quite satisfied with the more realistic scream.

OVERTURE

The overture (said to have been orchestrated the night before the premiere) begins solemnly with the music that accompanies the fateful appearance of the stone guest in the last scene of the opera. These thirty measures are in a minor
key; but once they are over, the overture breaks into a sunny major and chatters along as briskly as the overture to any
dramma giocoso
should. It leads directly, without a break, into the opening scene.

ACT I

Scene 1
Leporello, Don Giovanni’s low-comedy servant, is waiting for his master outside the home of a Sevillian beauty named Donna Anna, as Giovanni is courting her. Leporello complains comically about his job, but pretty soon out comes the Don followed by a maddened Donna Anna. Apparently he had disguised himself as Anna’s fiancé, Don Ottavio. Donna Anna runs for help, and her father, the Commendatore of Seville, comes out to challenge Giovanni to fight. The Don has no wish to take advantage of his youthfulness, but he is forced to draw his sword, and quickly disposes of the old gentleman. The Don and his servant run off and Donna Anna returns with Don Ottavio. Over the body of the Commandant the two solemnly swear vengeance.

Scene 2
On a lonely road near Seville the Don runs across an old flame named Donna Elvira, whom he had deserted. He manages to escape from this lady’s upbraidings but leaves behind his servant, Leporello, to explain matters. It is a very weird sort of comfort this fellow has to offer: he lists his master’s conquests in many lands—something over two thousand in number. This is the famous aria known as
Il catalogo
—“The Catalogue.”

Scene 3
In the next scene the Don embarks on what turns out to be the last of his would-be conquests. He and Leporello run across a party of villagers celebrating the engagement of pretty young Zerlina to a stout fellow named Masetto. The Don is smitten with the pretty girl and invites her to his castle in a very charming duet
(Là ci darem la mano)
. But he is interrupted by the entrance of Donna Elvira, who takes Zerlina temporarily under her wing, as well as Donna Anna and Don Ottavio. These last two know Don Giovanni only slightly and do not yet suspect that he is the murderer of Donna
Anna’s father. But his voice sounds strangely familiar to Anna, and she tells Ottavio that this may be the man they are looking for. He then sings the lovely aria (
Dalla sua pace
) in which Ottavio swears to devote himself to achieving peace of mind for his beloved Anna. To close the scene (though this ending is sometimes performed as a separate scene by itself), Leporello first repeats his complaints about his service, threatening to leave his master, but cheers up when the Don congratulates him on the report of progress he gives. It seems that Leporello has managed to placate the jealous Masetto, to get most of the peasants eating and drinking, and even to get rid of Donna Elvira, who had been warning her new protégé, Zerlina, against the Don. The Don is so much pleased that he breaks into one of the bubbliest of all arias—the so-called
Champagne Aria
—in which he looks forward to more conquests at his party that evening.

Scene 4
Outside the Don’s palace Zerlina and her fiancé are having a quarrel about the Don’s attentions, but it ends with a most charming apology, Zerlina’s little aria
Batti, batti
. This does not prevent the villain, Giovanni, from trying to pursue the girl, but temporarily, at least, Masetto stops him. Soon we hear the strains of the famous
Minuet
from inside the palace. Leporello, standing on the balcony, sees some masked figures approaching, and he hospitably invites them to the party. But before they go in, they sing a solemn and exceptionally beautiful trio
(Protegga, il giusto cielo)
. For these three maskers are Don Ottavio and the Ladies Anna and Elvira, calling on heaven to aid them in bringing Don Giovanni to justice.

Scene 5
At the party itself things are going along joyously, with three sets of dancers dancing to three different orchestras playing simultaneously in three different rhythms! While Leporello distracts Masetto by insisting on having him as partner in the dance, Don Giovanni manages to get Zerlina off into an inside room. She screams for help, runs out, and suddenly the Don is threatened by all his enemies at once. Yet the Don is no coward. He draws his sword, and in the exciting finale he makes good his escape.

ACT II

Scene 1
In the opening scene of Act II, the Don is up to his old tricks. He persuades the reluctant Leporello to change cloaks and hats with him so that he may woo Donna Elvira’s maid. But it is Elvira herself who appears on the balcony to be serenaded; and when she comes down, it is Leporello who, in his master’s clothes, makes love to her and takes her off. Now, wearing his servant’s clothes, the Don sings his serenade,
Deh! vieni alla finestra
, as he accompanies himself on the mandolin. However, he is interrupted by Masetto and a group of his friends searching for the Don to beat him up. In the dark they take the disguised man for Leporello, and the Don manages to send off all of Masetto’s helpers on a wild-goose chase, while he beats up the poor fellow himself. The scene closes with Zerlina finding her aching swain on the ground, and she sings him the sweet and comforting aria
Vedrai carino
. Her loving heart, she says, will cure his wounds.

Scene 2
Into the garden where the Commendatore lived stray Leporello and Donna Elvira, she still thinking him to be Giovanni. Donna Anna and Don Ottavio also stray into that garden, as do Zerlina and Masetto. Leporello, to save himself from all his master’s enemies, gives up his disguise and manages to make his escape. Now Ottavio feels certain that it must have been the Don who murdered the Commendatore (though his reasoning is none too clear), and he resolves to consult the local police. First, he delivers himself of one of the finest—and most difficult—tenor arias ever written,
Il mio tesoro
.

(A low-comedy scene, almost always omitted in modern productions, follows, in which Zerlina catches up with Leporello, drags him around the stage, ties him up in a chair, and even threatens him with a razor. But again Leporello manages an escape. This is followed by Donna Elvira’s fine aria
Mi tradì quel alma ingrata
—“All my love on him I lavished,” which does get sung in modern productions, usually before a drop curtain.)

Scene 3
At two o’clock in the morning, Don Giovanni and Leporello meet in a churchyard before an equestrian statue of the Commendatore. There is some banter about the possibility of the Don’s having made love to his servant’s wife, when the two are interrupted by a ghostly voice saying, “Before dawn your joking will end.” It is the statue speaking; and Leporello, trembling, reads the inscription on its base: “Here I await vengeance on the impious man who killed me.” Braving it out, Don Giovanni instructs his servant to invite the statue to dinner. Twice the stone figure accepts, once by nodding its head and once by uttering the word
Sì
—“Yes.” Assuming indifference, the Don merely remarks that it is all very bizarre.

Scene 4
is a very short one. Don Ottavio tries to persuade Donna Anna that, as Giovanni will soon be brought to justice, she should agree to marry him. Her reply is the aria
Non mi dir
. With great tenderness she tells him that she does love him but that while her sorrow for her father is still so fresh she cannot think of marriage.

Scene 5
The last, frightening scene opens in a quite jolly way. The Don is feasting by himself and, amid jests with Leporello, recognizes the various tunes his private dinner orchestra plays for him. One of them is the
Non più andrai
, from
The Marriage of Figaro
. This tune was high on Prague’s hit parade for 1787.

Donna Elvira brings in the first serious note when she begs Giovanni to change his way of life, but she is gaily disregarded. Suddenly there is a solemn knock at the door. Donna Elvira goes to the door and then rushes back badly frightened. Despite his master’s order Leporello refuses to open it; and when the Don does so himself, he finds the stone statue standing there, come to dinner. The statue grasps the hand of Don Giovanni; and when the Don refuses to repent his way of life, the Don and all his palace disappear in supernatural flames.

But the opera closes on a sweeter note. The Don is dead and, presumably, in hell; but all the other characters have learned a lesson from him, and they tell us of their future plans in a very tuneful finale. Anna promises to marry Ottavio
at the end of the year; the nuptials of Zerlina and Masetto are to take place much earlier; Elvira will enter a convent; and as for Leporello—he will seek a better master. Solemn Teutonic opera intendants, still assuming that
Don Giovanni
is a profoundly serious philosophical treatise, often omit the finale as too light to be appropriate. Rather an arrogant criticism of the very stage-wise Mozart!

DON PASQUALE

Opera in three acts by Gaetano Donizetti with
libretto in Italian, prepared, probably in collaboration,
by the composer and “Michele Accursi”
(pseudonym for Giacomo Ruffini) on
the basis of Angelo Anelli’s libretto for
Ser
Marc’ Antonio
, a once popular work by Stefano
Pavesi

Time: early 19th century

Place: Rome

First performance at Paris, January 3, 1843

    All the histories of opera I have ever read disagree about how many operas Donizetti wrote. They also disagree about which number belongs to
Don Pasquale
. Some say it was his sixty-fourth, some say his sixty-fifth, some say his sixty-seventh. (I don’t know why they skip the number 66.) They disagree, too, about how long the composition took him. Some say eleven days, some say two weeks, some say three weeks. Anyway, they all agree it was very fast.

They also agree on something more important. They all say it is his very finest work—better even than the more famous
Lucia di Lammermoor
or
The Elixir of Love
or
The Daughter of the Regiment
. It contains no world-famous passages like the sextet from
Lucia
, the tenor aria
Una furtiva lagrima
from
The Elixir
or the
Salut à la France
from
The Daughter
, but it has throughout an irrepressible bubbling, a masterly wit, an absence of affectation that makes of it, in a worthy performance, a more solidly satisfying work of art than any of the master’s earlier, more uneven operas. Unfortunately, one hardly ever hears a performance with artists equally matched on a high level. Masters and mistresses of
bel canto
are hard to come by; and when it is revived for a
basso buffo
with the other roles indifferently filled in, the result is disaster.

OVERTURE

Query to conductors of symphony orchestras: why don’t you ever list this piece on either serious or “pops” programs? It contains some of the opera’s very best tunes, and it has a pretty, if conventional, shape. Most audiences would love it.

ACT i

Scene 1
The scene is Rome; the time is the early nineteenth century; and the central character is a standard figure in old comedy—the aged, wealthy bachelor who wants to get married. He is fair game for anyone, and his name, this time, is Don Pasquale. This Don has a nephew, his only heir, whose name is Ernesto. When the opera opens, Pasquale, pacing up and down in his living room, is planning a nasty surprise for the youngster. Presently the Don’s old friend, Dr. Malatesta, joins him. Malatesta has found what Pasquale wants—a beautiful young girl to be his bride, and he proceeds to describe her in the aria
Bella siccome un angelo
—“Just as beautiful as an angel.” Who is she? Why, she is Malatesta’s sister. Pasquale is so delighted that he ignores Malatesta’s warnings about hurrying into marriage. Instead, he pushes his friend from the house and demands that this paragon be brought to him at once. Then he has a foolish soliloquy in which he already imagines himself the father of six!