Don Giovanni: Nobilità and other complications - Spring 2011

Analysis


As with The Marriage of Figaro and its companions in Beaumarchais’ trilogy, nobility is a key concept in Don Giovanni. If you don’t have it (by birth), you try to compete with it, or gain it by other means; if you have it by birth, you have a blank check which extends beyond currency into the realm of morals and privilege. Every character in Giovanni and Figaro is dealing with nobility on a conscious or unconscious level, and it
defines the two paired baritones who star in these operas (Don Giovanni and Leporello, and the Count and Don Giovanni).

Don Giovanni bears a resemblance to a grown and liberated Cherubino: like the incorrigible page, he makes a business of women, and uses his charm to avoid consequences. The Don’s noble birth (and presumed wealth) is essential for his lifestyle of excess and license, as well as a touchstone for how he will behave and interact with others. When he meets Zerlina – a peasant girl - and attempts to seduce her from her wedding to the peasant Masetto, he sweeps her off her feet and offers her honesty by reminding her that his noble birth assures it : “La nobilità ha dipinta negli occhi l'onestà.” (Honesty shines in the eyes of a nobleman, loosely translated). This excuse does not work immediately for Giovanni, but combined with his other birthright – good looks, a personal rather than class level inheritance, and his cultivated charisma and courtly manners– he nearly wins Zerlina before Donna Elvira arrives. When Giovanni meets Donn’Anna and Don Ottavio on the road, he plays the part of the nobleman by swearing elaborate and generous allegiance to them (even though he has already met the pair under hostile circumstances, making his real sentiment something far from the generous gesture he makes to keep his identity safe). This is in contrast with the interaction with Donna Elvira once she is recognized as a past seduction: his conversation is more familiar, though still “respectful,” Giovanni knows her and has a history with her. Before he recognizes Elvira, as she approaches from a distance he is impressed with her beauty and begins his seduction routine, readying himself to seduce a travelling noblewoman. Giovanni’s seduction of a noblewoman is more subtle than his manner with Zerlina, and he strikes the same “respectful” attitude towards Elvira as he does with Anna and Ottavio.


Leporello approaches nobility from the other side of the tracks. The first lines we hear from him complain of his hard work and low pay, and his desire to live in luxury like Giovanni. Mozart makes it clear to us that this is not the first time Leporello vents like this, out of earshot of his master. Giovanni and Leporello have much in common, just as the Count and Figaro do, but the arbitrary luck of one sets him disproportionately ahead in life of the other. Like the Count, Giovanni relies on Leporello for more than just the duties of a valet. Leporello is there to smooth things over with irate women and husbands, or even to substitute for Giovanni in a disguise. Giovanni trusts him more than the Count trusts Figaro, perhaps because Leporello has been his companion through all the roving around Europe in the production of the Catalog. Giovanni also lacks the establishment, household, and wife which keep the Count tied to his manor. Giovanni’s freedom – libertà – is the other keystone to his success, partly derived from his noble birth but also preserved carefully by his choices. Liberty for the Don means being free of commitment, history, and even moral standards; his libertine lifestyle is acknowledged literally by Leporello in the first scene (the ‘rape’ trio with Anna and the Don) as well as tacitly by all the other characters as they gain knowledge of Giovanni.


In its treatment of libertà and other Enlightenment concepts, Don Giovanni echoes Figaro’s themes with the same open-ended presentation of characters’ intentions and actions: the liberty Giovanni enjoys is a perversion of the Enlightenment ideals of liberty and free thought. The vengeance Anna seeks for her father’s death is an inversion (though perhaps justifiable considering the enormity of the offense against her) of the forgiveness manifested by the Countess. Both women’s stories deal with forgiveness, but at a different scale and in different context; the context of both Anna’s vengeance in the opening scene of Don Giovanni and the Countess’ forgiveness in the last scene of Figaro is complicated and leaves open as much about the characters involved as it reveals. Another Enlightenment topic which reappears in Giovanni is the “droit de seigneur,” but this time the fiancée (Zerlina) is not resisting the advances of the nobleman quite as strongly. Unlike Susanna, Zerlina has the option, in theory at least, to actually marry Giovanni and thus raise her social status; his seduction is also handled masterfully and appears suddenly for Zerlina, whereas the Count courts Susanna clumsily, under the eyes of the other servants, and proposes seduction various times, which loses the element of surprise Giovanni enjoys. In both operas, Da Ponte and Mozart show us that social conflicts are rarely cut-and-dried bad versus good, but rather that situations represent a spectrum of guilt and innocence.


Nobility is also a touchstone for the rest of Don Giovanni’s cast. Anna personifies nobility: her father was of high rank, and her fiancé is also a nobleman, though not yet in the same social position as the Commendatore. Anna’s character seeks honor, justice, truth, and protection for others; she also seeks vengeance for her father’s death, which causes conflict on the surface with the ideals of the Enlightenment, but is a very common and “noble” sentiment in this period and through much of history. Ottavio’s nobility is seen in the way he treats Anna – with respect, kindness, and deference, as well as championing her to the world and the Don – and the other characters with whom he interacts, especially Elvira. Elvira’s story causes her to be the least involved in Enlightenment ideals, at the surface level at least: her motivations are mainly her own cause (her infatuation with Giovanni and her wounded pride), though she does show generosity to Zerlina and Anna. Noble status, however, is a key to why Elvira interacts with others in this way: as a noblewoman who has been deflowered outside of marriage, she is now outside of societal norms (whether she chose to become involved with Giovanni or it was “rape” as with Anna) and can no longer hold the same expectations of life as a young, eligible woman. (Zerlina’s peasant status may free her from the pariah life to which Elvira’s society dooms her. At the opera’s end, Masetto and Zerlina apparently are ready to begin their lives – socially, if not emotionally - as if Giovanni had never interrupted them.)


The duality of Don Giovanni and Leporello as two different sides of the same character is explored in Peter Sellars’ production featuring twin brothers in these two roles. Here, the place of nobility in Mozart and Da Ponte’s creation is reexamined through the casting of a black man as the Don, and setting the story in the Bronx; instead of noble birth as the factor which sets the Don above social norms, Sellars’ Don Giovanni is a back street rogue, who shoots up during the “Champagne” aria. Instead of a crime against equals, the opera begins with the murder of a white man and the ‘rape’ of his daughter by a black man. Notably, the question of Anna’s volition in regard to the ‘rape’ is even more prominent here: her aggressor is not only unknown to her (and also, not her fiancé) but a man outside of her social class and general circle of interactions, as well as being an attractive and vital young man. The Perry brothers are indeed a fortunate find for Sellars, and while the entire interpretation is in some ways extremely removed from the original opera’s setting, the central questions of Don Giovanni’s relationships with others are here brought into new and provocative light. What exactly is the “nobilità” which Giovanni claims is “shown in the face of a gentleman” when he is seducing Zerlina, in a culture which is highly stratified but takes no part in the traditional class structures of 18th century Europe? This is a question which deserves a much longer paper and detailed investigation.


Ultimately, nobility is just one of the social masks Don Giovanni uses to further his aims. As a practical attribute, it is carte blanche for him to perpetrate whatever corruption he desires; as a concept, it focuses our perception of the characters as a group, not just the protagonist, as well as opening up new views on Giovanni’s many masks and disguises.
Response


Don Giovanni was the first opera I watched on DVD, not long after I first got “hooked” on opera. As such, I have been reacting to it and contemplating it about as long as I have been contemplating opera, and I’ve had a chance to live with the cast of Giovanni more than any other cast. The Mackerras/Zambello production we saw in class is not my favorite at least in terms of the Don and Leporello – I find their image reminds me of 1980s car commercials with mullets and A-shirts, and I’d always prefer a more traditional costume concept – but the singing is great, so I have enjoyed watching it nonetheless. My personal favorite Don Giovanni is Samuel Ramey, who combines the refined, good natured side of the Don with hints of a dark ruthless side.


I have ambivalent feelings about the character Giovanni, depending on the interpretation I read from the voice and the production. A Giovanni who seems to believe his own show, or shows some fear of hell before his final bravado, is more sympathetic in my interpretation. For example, Nicolai Ghiaurov’s Don is charming enough to convince me of his innocence, or at least that he doesn’t deserve the pains of hell; other Dons, like Keenlyside, seem hardened and brutal and so I side emotionally with the other characters in the cast and support his punishment.


Usually when I watch operas, the idea of a modern interpretation comes to mind, such as Tosca in World War II or Cosi in the modern American business class. I would never, however, have come up with an idea as original as Peter Sellars’ for Don Giovanni. That production ranks as one of the most provocative and thought provoking films I have seen, in the company of V for Vendetta. I could easily have written my entire essay on the Sellars Don Giovanni!


Of many jarring things in the Sellars version, I found the approach to subtitles particularly fascinating. Knowing the Italian text fairly well, as well as more traditional approaches to subtitles, I was startled by the modern, “slang” phrases chosen to translate Da Ponte’s operatic Italian. In this way, Sellars’ production and the subtitler’s slides translated the production as a whole, which though startling, is an excellent way to bring even the most traditional viewer into Sellars’ concept of Don Giovanni in the Bronx. I noticed many interesting details in the choice of modern translations for the voi (2nd person plural, used in various formal or informal contexts), and up-to-date (relatively speaking) equivalents where I did not expect them at first – such as the “sforzar la figlia, ed ammazzar il padre” line, which comes across as much harsher in today’s English than in 18th century Italian. Besides the linguistic value of the translated subtitles, other non-verbal cues such as gesture (and costume, of course) surprised me even as I expected these elements to be updated. Overall, the Sellars production does justice to the drama of Don Giovanni, though it would not be my choice for “light” entertainment, as might, for instance, von Karajan’s Salzburg production featuring Ramey and Furlanetto. Sellars’ Giovanni is disconcerting and complicated; provocative, in all the best senses of the word.