Overture to Don Giovanni, K. 527
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

[1787]

Mozart’s opera The Marriage of Figaro only ran for nine performances during its first production in Vienna in 1786, an underwhelming box office result. It fared much better when an Italian singer and impresario launched a new production that winter in Prague, a success that led him commission another opera from Mozart and his Figaro librettist, Lorenzo da Ponte, who took up the Spanish legend of the womanizer Don Juan.

Mozart cataloged Don Giovanni as an “opera buffa,” emphasizing the comedic aspects of the work. Don Giovanni is certainly funny, with its deceits, jealousies, mistaken identities, and bungled romances—yet da Ponte’s libretto and Mozart’s music both push the opera toward uncommonly deep pathos and tension. The overture begins with a slow introduction in D minor, establishing musical gestures and dramatic currents that foreshadow the opera’s searing climax. The rest of the overture momentarily dispels that tragic strain with robust and restless new themes.

Two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, timpani, strings