Don Giovanni in Full Score by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Don Giovanni in Full Score Reviews

• 
  Huda Aweys

  (The voice) of Truth and Goodness was higher in the end
  ؛>
  ***
  Between the love of life and the fact of death ...The virtue .. The love .. The justice .. The conscience
  I love this opera :) <3
  *****
  صوت الحق و الخير كان اعلى في النهاية
  ؛>
  ***
  ما بين عشق الحياة و حقيقة الموت ..
  الفضيلة .. الحب .. العدالة .. الضمير
  كانت اوبرا (دون جيوفاني) او (دون جوان) لموتسارت
  و اللي صورت نهاية سيئة و بشعة حتى على المستوى الروحي و الديني لدون جوان ، قد يكون المقصود منها هنا مقصد معنوي فقط نتيجة لعذاب الضمير و الخوف من الاعداء اللي بيطاردوه ، الا انها و في كل الحالات كانت نهاية مناسبة وضعها موتسارت في نسخته الأوبرالية الخاصة عن (دون جوان) ، مناسبة لذلك الرجل القح المبتذل اللي احترف اغواء النساء .. و اللي عمد الى اغتصاب احدى الفلاحات في يوم زفافها
  أوبرا رائعة :)
  <3
  
  
• 
  Marina

  Ok, so, I didn't actually read this. But I just saw it, and I feel like that counts for something.
  The libretto is hardly ever the chief virtue of an opera, and Don Giovanni is no exception. Regardless of its dubious ~literary merit~, I loved this opera, with all of its ridiculous melodrama and bawdy humor (he had 1,003 girls in Spain!!).
  The ending was SO WILD. Like, by some turn of events, Don Giovanni ends up in a ghostly statuary, and then this statue starts talking, then he invites the statue to dinner, then blah blah blah some time elapses, then Giovanni is eating dinner with some ladies (wink) and the statue actually shows up!! So Giovanni is super spooked but manages to be like "hey do you want some food?" and the statue is like "no. I am nourished by heaven." so Giovanni's like THEN WHY THE HECK DID YOU COME TO DINNER then the statue is like YA GOTTA REPENT FOR YOUR SINS and then Giovanni is like NAH and then the statue banishes him to hell (the Metropolitan Opera's production had some crazy pyrotechnics at this point, I could even feel the heat way, way up in the high balcony where us poor people are banished to) and yeah, that was pretty much the end of that. Confusing and shoddily written? Sure. Exciting? HELL YEAH.
  Don Giovanni is the prodigal rake that you love to hate and hate to.... wait, you don't hate to love him. You just hate him. He's an asshole. But I wouldn't have it any other way.
  The music is infallible. I mean, it's Mozart.
• 
  Myriam

  Superbe opéra!
• 
  Rich

  I think this is the Hamlet of operas.
  
  I think Don Giovanni (the opera, not the character) makes an inquiry into whether the height of certain human emotions make sense. There are a multitude of serious emotions in the opera and they are believable, due to the music and the libretto, but the opera questions each nevertheless. Inquires about the multitude of emotions.
• 
  Danilo De rossi

  Non sono un amante della lirica, ma quest'opera l'ho trovata molto piacevole e divertente. Il personaggio di Don Giovanni è ormai diventato leggenda, ma quello che ho preferito è senza dubbio Leporello. È un testo molto veloce, che si legge con rapidità e leggerezza ma che, se studiato più a fondo, mostra aspetti più complessi rispetto a quelli che appaiono in superficie.
• 
  Fiona

  Ich habe das Libretto als Vorbereitung für die Oper gelesen, um auch zu verstehen, was da auf der Bühne so passiert ;)
  Mir hat es sehr gut gefallen, die Geschichte hat Charme und Witz und doch auch Tragik.
  Das Ende fand ich etwas schnell und wirr, aber trotzdem hatte ich Spaß und habe das Buch in einem Rutsch durchgelesen.
• 
  Maan Kawas

  Mozart's dark opera "Don Giovanni" is my favorite Mozart opera of all time. I really really loved the libretto, and Bleiler's translation was an excellent one. I couldn't resist watching the opera too! The scene with the Commendatore (The Statue) is powerful and amazing!
• 
  Jason Loeffler

  An all-around jerk gets dragged to hell? What's not to like?
• 
  Annelisa O’Neal

  So enjoyable to read because of its musical quality! Also an awfully interesting combo of comedy and eternal damnation.
• 
  Raúl

  Los tres libretos que Da Ponte escribió para Mozart justamente se encuentran en lo más alto de la producción operística.
• 
  Russ

  Judging from reviews of this and other librettos, most people read librettos before seeing an opera performed. I read this for other reasons. My review is based solely on reading the text, and not off seeing a performance, listening to a recording, nor reading sheet music.
  
  Reading it as text, I found it to be an engaging, evocative story, and a shocking one. When I was a child, I heard stories and jokes about “Don Juan” and what a great ladies’ man he was. After reading this I am stunned by what a wicked sex predator he was, at least in this telling of his story. He is no ladies’ man. Calling him a seducer would be generous. He is a rapist. And a liar. And a terrible boss who treats his servant like cannon fodder. He is a powerful, wealthy nobleman, so that makes him attractive to some impressionable people. He can also be bold, amusing, and confident, but that’s where his attractive traits end.
  
  His toady Leporello is more sympathetic because he has to put up with all of Don Giovanni’s wickedness and lie for him. But he comes across as a coward who will not stand up for what is right. Servants back then were in very inferior positions, but this guy seems totally gutless.
  
  The women characters come across better, but mostly as victims. Donna Anna is a suffering young woman whose attack by Giovanni on her and her father start the action of the story. Donna Elvira sounds early alarm bells about Don Giovanni, and she appears to be the heroin of the story until she crumbles in the second act by falling for Giovanni’s lies one more time. Giovanni also targets peasant girl Zerlina. Without saying what happens to her, she and her fiancé are fun characters to root for.
  
  There was a great deal of repetition of words in the text, which is normal for music, but it doesn’t serve much purpose and even gets tedious while reading it. For example, Don Giovanni says “Don’t be crazy, don’t be crazy, don’t be crazy, don’t be crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy!” (Act II, Sc. 1) and repeats that several times. There are dozens of examples just like this throughout the libretto, including scenes where different characters repeat the exact same lines together or in succession. At first I read all the lines, treating it like poetry, but after a while I began skipping over multiple repeated phrases.
  
  The story relies on a few of the same dopey contrivances that Shakespeare and a lot of other people must have used in comedies for centuries back then like mistaken identities and talking ghosts. I wouldn’t care for those elements in current literature but I’ll give the old masters a pass.
  
  A few words about the format of this book from “The Dover Opera Libretto Series.” Italian lyrics are in the left column and English on the right of each page. I found it very readable. The spacing was clear. It was easy to tell who is speaking or singing. The translation and alignment must have been carefully done because it is easy to look to the left and see what the original lines were in Italian. Although I do not speak Italian, it is easy to pick out which words are which if you know something about romance languages. My only quibble was that at times I didn’t know if the stage directions were written by Lorenzo Da Ponte or translator/editor Ellen Bleiler herself.
  
  All in all, I enjoyed reading this and I found the end to be very satisfying. This is probably important not just for opera fans to read, but for anybody who wants a broader understanding of all writing styles and genres, including drama and music.
  
• 
  Laura L. Van Dam

  Tengo este libreto en una edición bilingüe y comentada por el prestigioso musicólogo Kurt Pahlen. Es absolutamente genial. Como si fuera poco, en 1994 el mismísimo Pahlen dio unas conferencias sobre Historia de la Ópera en el Salón Dorado del Teatro Colón, donde me autografió este libro. Un tesoro que guardo con mucho cariño.
• 
  Karen

  Reading again along with Met stream.
• 
  Nikita

  Great story and would be great to see as an operatic performance, but I don't recommend reading the libretto. It's just like reading a bunch of repetitive song lyrics.
• 
  Fallon

  Watch the opera while reading this as the humor is actually great, you just usually need the visual to get it fully.
• 
  Trey Kennedy

  Some great lessons in here on not being a terrible person and all that.
• 
  Ananannana

  What a bae.
• 
  Jana's infinitepassionforbooks

  Meine absolute Lieblingsoper!
• 
  Elizabeth

  “...one who partakes of celestial food does not partake of mortal food” (113).
• 
  liam

  Read along whilst watching the Royal Opera House stream.
• 
  Rebekah Laughbaum

  Don Giovanni opera? Fantastic. The libretto on it’s own though? Sub-par. Mozart’s music makes up for Da Ponte’s mediocre writing.
• 
  Merit

  voor uni. wat is don giovanni een zak, iel.
• 
  Ella Louise Schalski

  Read for class
• 
  Heidi

  Täytyy kyllä todeta heti alkuunsa, että Esko Elstelän suomennos on loistava. Riimittelyt toimii, melodista tekstiä. Itse teksti sitten oli niin dramaturgialtaan ja sisällöltään aika kökkistä. Sukupuoliroolit heteroövereissään pelkkää kökkö kökkistä. Luettuna ilman oopperan spektaakkelia ja Mozartin neronleimauttamaa musiikkia teksti oli minulle jopa tahattoman hauska. Tarinan sisältö: himohirmu DG yrittää päästä tuuppaamaan minkä kerkiää, mutta alussa tappaa yhden neidon isän (komtuuri) ja lopussa hybriksessään/tuhoisan ylpeänä kutsuu komtuurin haamun illalliselle ja loppu tulee helvetin tulessa. Tässä välissä ihan sikana säätöä ja tunteita.
• 
  Lillian

  Some enjoy Don Giovanni for its ambiguity, but that is precisely why I did not enjoy it.
• 
  Steffi

  Gelesen zu Schulzeiten, als Vergleich mit Frischs Don Juan oder die Liebe zur Geometrie. Gefällt mir wesentlich besser als Frisch, sehr amüsant geschrieben.
• 
  Bruce Crown

  An Opera by Mozart; what else do you need to know?