Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro is certainly an incredible masterpiece. It one of three great Italian comedy operas that Mozart and his friend Italian librettist friend, Lorenzo DaPonte wrote together, the other two being Cosi Fan Tutti, and Don Giovanni. Perhaps there is no greater Italian opera than Mozart’s Don Giovanni. It has been called the perfect opera. It has been heaped upon with praise since its premiere. It is a perfect blend of comedy and tragedy. Before Don Giovanni, an opera was either a comedy or a tragedy, but this one is both. Mozart clearly separated the characters into serious characters and comedic characters. As in all of his mature operas, the characters’ personalities are perfectly represented by their arias. Mozart was unparalleled in his ability to represent human characters with music. Every nuance of emotion is perfectly captured by the music. Each and every aria is perfectly proportioned and there is not a note too many or too few.

As in Figaro, the subject matter is quite risqué. Mozart and DaPonte went even farther in Don Giovanni than in Figaro as far as using sexually charged subject matter. As the curtain rises after the overture, the audience witnesses a rape, followed by a violent murder. Yet, this is a comedy! A very dark comedy indeed!

The complexity of the ensemble music is equal to that of Figaro, and even surpasses it in some numbers. Specifically, I am thinking of the ballroom scene, that extraordinary tour de force of contrapuntal complexity in which Mozart calls for three small orchestras to be up on stage with the singers. Mozart has each orchestra play a different dance tune in a different rhythm, with the second and third orchestras tuning up harmoniously while the first one begins playing. The complexity of this music cannot be fully appreciated on any recording. It cannot be appreciated in a modern opera house either. The sound gets all mixed together in a homogeneous blend in today’s large opera houses. In today’s large performing venues, those in the first few rows might be able to hear the cross rhythms and appreciate the spatial separation of the sound from each orchestra if it is performed well. In a recording, even a good surround sound recording, the sense of the space occupied by each orchestra does not come across. Having the score in hand while listening helps an awful lot, but there is no substitute for sitting on the front row during a good performance of this incredible music.

I saw Don Giovanni in one of the beautiful concert halls here in Jacksonville, Florida a few years ago. I thought it was a wonderful performance, but the acoustics of the hall are not good enough to convey the complexity of such music. And I was appalled that the three small orchestral groups were not brought up on stage for the ballroom scene as Mozart indicated.

Mozart composed Don Giovanni for an opera house in Prague that seated only 750 people. He claimed that he did not compose Don Giovanni for the pleasure of the general public but for his own pleasure and that of his close friends in Prague.

The ballroom scene in the finale of act 1 is the climax of Don Giovanni. Mozart always places the most complex and intense music in a central location. Whether the work under consideration is a whole opera, or just one number from the opera, or whether it is a symphonic movement or what have you, Mozart always places the climax in the middle. So did Haydn and Beethoven. In fact, it is one of the defining characteristics of the Viennese classical style that the climax comes about midway through a piece of music.

The withholding of the trombones until the graveyard scene in act II was a stroke of genius. Mozart used the trombones sparingly in the overture, and always blending with other instruments, never alone. Then they are not heard again until the ghost of the comandatore speaks from the grave. The power and unearthliness created by the three trombones harmonizing with the voice of the comandatore is all the more powerful because of their total absence prior to that eerie scene. In the same way Mozart, in Cosi Fan tutti, withholds the clarinets (always associated with love, by Mozart) until that beautiful love duet in scene II of act 1in which the clarinets, playing in thirds, add a luxurious, sensuous beauty to he sound. But in Don Giovanni the trombones are withheld for a much longer period than are the clarinets in Cosi Fan Tutti, and the esoteric harmony gives the voice of the Comandatore an unearthly quality. Trombones, of course, have been used since the medieval period to symbolize the sacred. The fact that trombone harmony had been so deeply ingrained in the European consciousness as symbolizing the sacred is what enabled Mozart to so effectively use them to symbolize the corruption of the sacred.

If you have never seen or heard Don Giovanni, do yourself a favor and see this outstanding masterpiece. This incredible opera is a masterpiece in every respect. From the first note of the overture to the last note of the opera there is not one flaw. Don Giovanni is not a greater masterpiece than Mozart’s Figaro or Die Zauberflöte, but it’s certainly equal to those two incredible masterpieces. Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutti is also a wonderful work of art and has been under appreciated by the public, yet it is not quite on the level of the above named operas. Don Giovanni, for many people, is the greatest opera of them all.