Other bits Flashcards
Don Giovanni ending - what are the two endings and general effect?
- 2 endings: one with lieto fine (other characters conclude the opera, resolving all their affairs and moralising ending)
- Other just ends with DG being dragged to hell
- Lieto fine ending ties up dramatic end more effectively, according to comic opera convention; calmer and more rational atmosphere; moralising lesson proclaimed
- The cut means DG’s death is the thing which the audience vivdly remembers at the end; DG becomes hero and object of awe; leaves audience to ‘swell on man’s irrationality’. This ending was more popular to nineteenth century audiences.
Specific 1780s effect of DG endings:
(All from Michael F. Robinson)
- Including final chorus:
- Da Ponte needed to arrange: peripitea (appearance of Commendatore); dénouement unravelling of plot; tutti expressing consensus among characters
- Including finale is less tragic but therefore also less spectacular since dragging to hell is not the last thing
- Cutting it:
- Doesn’t allow unravelling of plot which is necessary for comic opera
- Raises heroic and tragic status of DG – produced extra sympathy for title character
- Scenic and dramatic impact greater: maximum spectacle only if scene is cut – popular ending because of this spectacle, not tragedy
- Convention still obeyed (to a point) with offstage chorus of demons
- Final tierce de Picardie which coincides with climax of action – premature tonic rare in finali so suggests this could be end
Musical features of ending
- Parallels between duel with commendatore and final scene:
o D minor
o Sword motifs (semiquavers?)
o Dim7 chord when commendatore is wounded (b.175) returns when the ghost appears in b.433 of finale
o Rushton’s ‘chromatic moan’ b.190-194 of no.1 which leaves harmony unresolved and open (waiting to be resolved by recognition moment)
Recognition in Don G
Jessica Waldoff
- Aristotle plot requires recognition, peripetia and pathos
- Crux of DG drama is when he is confronted by ghost of Commendatore and it is revealed that DG must repent or die. But recognition is denied..
- Lieto fine crucial part not only of comic opera but of Enlightenment morals
- DG is not reformed or forgiven and does therefore not give into the lieto fine
- DG refuses to acknowledge the moral
- DG is damned (not reformed) but is also the protagonist: these ideas are at odds.
- He never acknowledges his crimes despite being called out several times
Final scene of Don G setup for recognition
- Entrance of ghost set apart by shift to alla breve, addition of trombones and D minor
- Central action shifts matched by musical shifts
- Recap of overture material signifies how it is most important moment
- But DG refuses to acknowledge significance of Commendatore’s return
- Therefore he cannot be a tragic hero
- He ‘combines villany and heroism’. He is ‘an enigma, an anti-hero’.
- Dissatisfaction with lieto fine precisely because of failed recognition scene
- Conflicted ending shows something contradictory and uncertain in human nature – resists neat, moral conclusion.
Don G darkness/genre
- Scenes juxtaposed without much concern for internal connection
- Action takes place mostly at night
- Characters often masked
- Contrast of extremes is antique notion inherited from commedia dell’arte
- Murder and farce freely mixed
- Supernatural is what guaranteed the opera’s lasting reputation in 19th century
Don Giovanni musical character
o Main point is not his seduction but his ‘urge to live and love which he has the uncontrolled energy to satisfy’ – Albert.
o Chameleon like – takes on other characters’ music
o Zerlina: DG doesn’t break into 6/8 until allegro (‘andiam’) when she agrees and here he takes on lower class, pastoral rhythm
o Elvira: he takes up her arpeggio phrases during proxy seduction of Act II trio
o DG doesn’t necessarily reveal himself musically (disguised as Leporello in no.17)
o His other two arias are in Bb (‘fin ch’han’) and D major (‘deh vieni’) which are central keys
o D major is at heart of his confrontations with Commendatore in introduction and also in his last scene – finale climax. Statue/Commendatore undermines/weakens his D major with lots of modulations
o His final phrase ‘che terror’ b.591-2 is D-Bb so he ‘proclaims his tonal emblem even at this ultimate moment’
Don Giovanni genre
- Contrast between seria and buffa style
- Act II dominated by comic incidents – stemming from DG’s disguise as Leporello; other characters become ‘butts’ of the joke. Seria characters are inserted ‘in an arbitrary manner’ (Steptoe - I don’t agree?)
- Act I Ottavio is important and at key moments of drama but not act II
- Lots of triple time in first bits of act II – light tone
- Mi tradi and Ottavio’s ‘mi tesoro’ are reflective arias, not driving plot.
Goehring on Così
- Offers a rebuttal of 18th century sentimentalism - holds it up for inspection
- Vorrei dir quoting Lilla aria
- Everything is seen ‘through the contrivance of Don Alfonso’ - artifice is controlled
- Fra gli amplessi, audience is watching Guglielmo and DA
- Fiordiligi consciously makes herself into tragic heroine and believes what she says; ‘right aria in the wrong opera’
- Come scoglio irony comes from context, less from musical language (which is grand and convincing) as she is denied her exit by the men.
Don Giovanni Character
Rusbridger:
- psychoanalyses him - seen as sexual psychopath
- Sees him as having Oedipus complex - wants to be the father’s phallus so kills Commendatore
- Stuck in the psychological world of a child in ‘phallic narcissm’
- Sees la ci darem as ‘mastabatory battering ram’
Bernard:
- Doesn’t belong to social surroundings but exploits the class relations and his social position from birth.
Ottavio:
character
Ottavio: Hunter
- ‘ottavio’s character is the very epitome of Enlightened nobility’
- Says he is least understood character because Mozart and Da Ponte more famously ridiculed the nobility.
- Don Ottavio and Anna quickly side with Elvira because she is noble, regardless of the fact that they don’t know each other
- Ottavio is slow to pass judgement on DG because he is also noble
- Can be seen as DG’s true antagonist in terms of standard noble values.
- Exemplar of noble simplicity, lack of excess: ‘Dalla sua pace’ is reflective, sweet and simple. Deliberative, contained, reasonable.
- Ottavio can also be seen as noble or cowardly:
o His interjection ‘ohime, respiro’ in recit before Or sai can be comic, as if he is relieved that Anna is still a virgin
o OR can demonstrate real sympathy for her.
