Don Giovanni - An Interview
Conductor Steven White interviews himself about Don Giovanni:
SW: Thank you for taking the time to answer these few questions about Mozart’s great opera Don Giovanni. By the way, do you mind if I call you Steven, or do you prefer Maes—
SW: PLEASE do call me Steven…with a “v.” Thanks for asking.
Don Giovanni confronts the stone guest in a painting by Alexandre-Évariste Fragonard, ca 1830–35 (Musée des Beaux-Arts de Strasbourg)
SW: Ok, Steven…so, where does Don Giovanni rank, as it were, with the other great operas of the so-called canon? And, forgive the naiveté of this question, but is it as great as, greater than, or not as great as Le nozze di Figaro?
SW: Well, for your first question, let’s acknowledge that there are many ways to measure greatness. One way is to look at a work’s influence. I don’t think it would be an exaggeration to state that Don Giovanni was by far the most influential opera before Tristan. And, like Tristan, its influence can’t be measured merely in operatic terms alone. Indeed, E. T. A. Hoffmann stated something to the effect that Romanticism itself began at the moment Don Giovanni clasped the hand of the Stone Guest. It was seen by early nineteenth-century composers as a kind of “call to the daemonic,” my phrase, which reinforced many of their expressive proclivities. Don Giovanni gave them permission to dabble with the dark side.
SW: Are you talking about composers of opera alone? What about others—Beethoven, for example—for whom opera was not their only artistic outlet?
SW: Beethoven’s attitude towards all three of the Da Ponte/Mozart masterpieces (speaking now of Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte) is somewhat amusing. He protested that he did not find them appealing because he thought their plots and libretti too licentious and frivolous. Die Zauberflöte, as one would expect, was the great influence on Fidelio. However, and this is no mere speculation, the spirit of Don Giovanni permeates Beethoven’s works from his very earliest piano trios through to the Ninth Symphony. The opening movement of the Ninth could not possibly exist without the D minor opening of the Don Giovanni overture and its recapitulation in the opera’s climax. Do you know the Brahms D minor Piano Concerto?
SW: Um, yes.
SW: Ok, then. Same thing. In the scene in which Giovanni mortally wounds the Commendatore, Mozart’s music is poignantly romantic—“Brahmsian,” even. It’s startling to think that this music was composed in late 1786 and early 1787. Look, it would be easier to name—if you could find them—the composers who could not trace some significant lineage to the musical and aesthetic psychology of Don Giovanni. Get this. Someone once asked Rossini to name his personal favorite of HIS OWN operas. Do you know what he said?
SW: Enlighten me, please.
SW: DON GIOVANNI!
SW: Well that’s silly, isn’t it—kind of like Rossini himself?
SW: Don’t go there! Rossini was not being disingenuous. He was expressing not only reverence of the highest order but also an acknowledgement that, without Mozart—Don Giovanni in particular—Il barbiere di Siviglia, La Cenerentola, Il Turco in Italia, etc., could not have existed.
SW: Ok, so what you’re saying is…
SW: AND—pardon the interruption—let me just also say that Gounod’s Faust is also a direct descendant of Don Giovanni in innumerable ways, most particularly in its mixture of comedy and tragedy. And please—and this is a subject of at least two dissertations—don’t forget Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress. This particular masterpiece almost IS Don Giovanni in so many respects.
SW: Great—um, can I get you back to my second question about…
SW: Yes, but let me just finish up this particular subject regarding influence by quoting something that Tchaikovsky said. Hold on, I want to read it exactly. Ok, here it is: “It is thanks to Mozart that I have devoted my life to music. Above all I love Don Giovanni, as it was thanks to this work that I found out what music is.”
SW: Wow. That’s quite powerful. So, back to my Figaro vs. Giovanni question that I posed at the top.
SW: Well, it’s a question that irresponsibly excludes Così fan tutte from the discussion, but I think I understand the reason behind it. For years—many decades, even— Così was not as popular as Le nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni. I’d love to have a discussion about Così with you sometime, because there are those—I count myself in that number—who feel that Così is a masterpiece as significant as the other two. In fact, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that Mozart’s deployment of instrumental forces in Così makes it the greatest orchestral piece of the eighteenth century.
SW: We’re running out of time.
SW: Sorry. Well, the Figaro-Giovanni comparison is similar in some ways to the comparison between the St. Matthew Passion and the B Minor Mass of J. S. Bach. We all know that we are talking about certifiable pillars of civilization. There are those who offer analysis to the effect that the St. Matthew Passion is more nearly “human” (therefore more sentimental, in ways) than the B Minor Mass, with its crystalline symbolism and clinical perfection. Le nozze di Figaro is as “human” an opera as has ever been written. And I suppose it could be a vaguely acceptable stretch to say that Don Giovanni correlates to the symbolic and psychological overtones of the Mass, but only vaguely. It’s absurd, in my opinion, to argue over which is greater. I couldn’t imagine life without any of these four works.
SW: Any final thoughts? We have about twenty seconds.
SW: Well, I’m just exceedingly grateful anytime I have an opportunity to conduct Don Giovanni. I try to find a way to conduct Mozart—somewhere—at least once every season. There is no higher manifestation of mankind’s ability to rise above the squalor of routine than through the sublimely insightful beauty that Mozart has bequeathed us.