Overture to Don Giovanni, K. 527
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

THE STORY

Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni (1787) tells the tale of a hedonist nobleman who is finally brought to justice for his licentious lifestyle. Over the course of the opera, Don Giovanni philanders and accumulates enemies as his victims and their partners conspire to catch the profligate. Ever obstinate and unrepentant, he refuses to change his ways and meets his demise as demons drag him to the underworld.

The mixture of opera buffa (comedic) and opera seria (dramatic) styles—as well as the incorporation of supernatural elements—led Mozart to call Don Giovanni a drama giocoso (comedic drama). The contrast between strings and winds, jocular and serious, aurally combines the buffa and seria elements of the opera. Heavy chords in the winds disperse the scurrying strings, as if hinting at the comedic scenes as various characters blunder in their attempts to bring Don Giovanni to justice.

The success of the opera, first in Prague, then in Vienna, represented the height of Mozart’s dramatic collaboration with Lorenzo Da Ponte, the librettist who also furnished Mozart with the text to The Marriage of Figaro (1786) and Così fan tutte (1790).

LISTEN FOR

• The thunderous opening chord in the key of D minor followed by rising and swelling scales in the strings and a foreboding ascending chromatic line in the woodwinds; the dramatic presentation of D minor returns at the very end of the opera, when the titular character is dragged to the underworld to atone for his sins
• The brooding harmonies in the slow introduction giving way to the playful major mode in the fast body of the overture

INSTRUMENTATION

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