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‘No Meat for the Teeth of my Viennese’: Don Giovanni and the Theatre of Its Time1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2009

Simon Williams
Simon Williams
Affiliation:
Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara
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Extract

After the triumph of its première in Prague in November 1787, Don Giovanni enjoyed little immediate success in the theatres of central Europe. It was received with indifference in Vienna, with unease, even outright hostility elsewhere. Mozart's music on its own aroused almost universal admiration, but as a dramatic medium it unsettled audiences. This was best expressed by a correspondent for the Chronik von Berlin, who saw the first performance at the Berlin National Theatre in December 1790. In his review he granted readily that ‘Mozart is an excellent, a great composer’ but in Don Giovanni he felt that greatness to have been betrayed.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , Spring 1989 , pp. 23 - 40
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 1989

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References

Notes

2. Excerpted in Deutsch, Otto Erich, Mozart: A Documentary Biography, tr. Blom, Eric, Brans-combe, Peter & Noble, Jeremy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1965), 380.Google Scholar

3. Extracted in Rushton, Julian, W. A. Mozart: Don Giovanni (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 123–4.Google Scholar

4. The most thorough study of these years can be found in Zechmeister, Gustav, Die Wiener Theater nächst der Burg und nächsl dem Kärntnertortheater von 1747 bis 1776, Theatergeschichte Oesterreiches, III, 2 (Vienna: Bohlau, 1971).Google Scholar

5. A good summary of Josef II's reforms and of the monarch's position in the unitary state that resulted is provided by Blanning, T. C. W. in Joseph II and Enlightened Despotism, Seminar Studies in History (London: Longmans, 1970).Google Scholar

6. Quoted in Kindermann, Heinz, ‘Das Publikum und die Schauspieler-Republik’, in Das Burg-theater und sein Publikum, ed. Dietrich, Margret, der Wissenschaften, Österreichische Akademie, Klasse, Philosophische-Historische, 305 (Vienna: Der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1976), 99.Google Scholar

7. Quoted in Kindermann, Heinz, Theatergeschichte Europas, vol. 5 (Salzburg: Otto Müller, 1962), 97.Google Scholar

8. Die Jäger was first performed at the Burgtheater in December 1786 and was given 50 performances to 1810, 105 performances to 1869. For purposes of comparison, an even more celebrated popular play, Kotzebue's Menschenhass und Reue (best known in the English-language world as The Stranger) was first performed in 1789, received 64 performances to 1810 and 123 performances to 1855. Goethe's Clavigo, first performed at the Burgtheater in 1786, received only 8 performances to 1810 and 28 performances to 1839. Don Giovanni received 15 performances to 1788 and then was revived, in German in 1798, to receive 14 performances to 1803. See Hadamowsky, Franz, Die Wiener Hoftheater 1776–1966, 1 (Vienna: Prachner, 1966)Google Scholar and Burgtheater 1776–1976, 1 (Vienna: Ueberreuter, n.d. [1976]).Google Scholar

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11. This has been a constant preoccupation of the critical discussion of Don Giovanni since Hoffmann, E. T. A.'s tale ‘Don Juan’ (1813)Google Scholar, published in his collection Phantasiestücke in Callots Manier (1814).Google Scholar

12. The most comprehensive treatment of the subject is in Lert, Ernst, Mozart auf dem Theater (Berlin & Leipzig: Schuster & LoefRer, 1921), especially 30–104Google Scholar. A more recent discussion can be found in Mann, Michael, ‘Sturm und Drang: Drama oder Theater’, Mozart-Jahrbuch (1973–1974), 33–8.Google Scholar

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20. Between 1781 and 1785, Friedrich Ludwig Schröder, who did much to introduce Shakespeare onto the German stage, was resident at the Burgtheater. In addition to acting in severely adapted versions of Hamlet and King Lear, he played leads in adaptations of Henry IV (11 1782)Google Scholar, Cymbeline (12, 1782)Google Scholar and Othello (1785)Google Scholar. The Burgtheater also staged Measure for Measure (1783)Google Scholar and The Merry Wives of Windsor (1784)Google Scholar but in such altered versions that the originals could hardly be recognized. See Stahl, Ernst Leopold, Shakespeare and das deutsche Theater (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1947), 117.Google Scholar

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22. Quoted in Grendel, Frédéric, Beaumarchais ou la calomnie (Paris: Flammarion, 1973), 413.Google Scholar

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24. Kunze, Stefan, Mozarts Opern (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1984), 320.Google Scholar

25. Strohm, Reinhard, Die italienische Oper im 18. Jahrhundert (Wilhelmshaven: Heinrichshofen, 1979), 25.Google Scholar

26. Noske, , 85.Google Scholar

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28. Don Neville, , ‘Moral Philosophy in the Metastasian Dramas’, Crosscurrents, 35.Google Scholar

29. Robinson, Michael F., ‘The Ancient and the Modern: A Comparison of Metastasio and Calza-bigi’, Crosscurrents, 139–40.Google Scholar

30. Of the several discussions about how the Don Juan story was treated in the eighteenth-century theatre, the most thorough can be found in Kunze, Stefan, Don Giovanni vor Mozart (Munich: Fink, 1972).Google Scholar

31. Kunze, , Mozarts Opern, 322–4.Google Scholar

32. Ernst Lert observes that ‘Leporello’ is a hispanisization of the Hanswurst character Lipperl, who first appeared on the stage in Graz in 1760, and was later seen in Vienna (341).

33. Mann, William, The Operas of Mozart (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 477.Google Scholar

34. Honolka, Kurt's judgement in Kulturgeschichte des Librettos (Wilhemshaven: Heinrichshofen, 1979), 95Google Scholar, that the events at the beginning of act 2 are nothing more than ‘a chain of purely routine misunderstandings’ is based upon the puzzling but oft-repeated assumption that Da Ponte's libretto is strong only where it sticks close to its source, the Bertati libretto for Ganzaniga's setting. In fact, such an assumption fails entirely to recognise the social implications of the opera.

35. See Hoffmann, E. T. A., ‘Don Juan’, Werke, 1 (Cologne: Prösdorf, 1965), 48–9.Google Scholar

36. Allanbrooke, Wye Jamieson, Rhythmic Gesture in Mozart (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 224.Google Scholar

37. Robinson, M. F., ‘The Aria in Opera Seria, 1725–1780’, Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, 88 (1962), 33.Google Scholar

38. Noske, , 87.Google Scholar

39. Allenbrooke discusses in detail both the musical and dramatic indeterminacy of the Don Giovanni character (207–24).

40. Kunze, , Mozarts Opern, 328.Google Scholar

41. Brophy, , 237–9.Google Scholar