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The Original Portrayal of Mozart's Don Giovanni offers an original
reading of Mozart's and Da Ponte's opera Don Giovanni, using as a
lens the portrayal of the title role by its creator, the baritone
Luigi Bassi (1766-1825). Although Bassi was coached in the role by
the composer himself, his portrayal has never been studied in depth
before, and this book presents a large number of new sources
(first- and second-hand accounts), which allows us to reconstruct
his performance scene by scene. The book confronts Bassi's
portrayal with a study of the opera's early German reception and
performance history, demonstrating how Don Giovanni as we know it
today was not only created by Mozart, Da Ponte and Luigi Bassi but
also by the early German adapters, translators, critics and
performers who turned the title character into the arrogant and
violent villain we still encounter in most of today's stage
productions. Incorporating discussion of dramaturgical thinking of
the late Enlightenment and the difficult moral problems that the
opera raises, this is an important study for scholars and
researchers from opera studies, theatre and performance studies,
music history as well as conductors, directors and singers.
Although Mozart's Don Giovanni (1787) is the most analysed of all
operas, Lorenzo Da Ponte's libretto has rarely been studied as a
work of poetry in its own right. The author argues that the
libretto, rather than perpetuating the conservative religious
morality implicit in the story of Don Juan, subjects our culture's
myth of human sexuality to a critical rewriting. Combining poetic
close reading with approaches drawn from linguistics,
psychoanalysis, anthropology, political theory, legal history,
intellectual history, literary history, art history and theatrical
performance analysis, she studies the Don Giovanni libretto as a
radical political text of the Late Enlightenment, which has lost
none of its ability to provoke. The questions it raises concerning
the nature of compassion, seduction and violence, and the autonomy
and responsibility of the individual, are still highly relevant for
us today.
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