Don Giovanni

»Where have you gotten the deranged rights to which you've dedicated your life?«, asks George Sand of the legendary figure. He casually confides in Gottfried Benn: »I once had the dream that a young birch tree gave me the gift of a son.« No other fictional character of modern times has had more public attention than Don Juan, that »seducer of Seville«, who emerged in 1613 from the pen of a Spanish monk. Only seven years younger than his compatriot Don Quixote, since that time he has made his way through dramas, epics, novels and operas, and eerily wandered over cinema screens and plasma monitors. Against the backdrop of different moral attitudes he brags – monuments and icons – of his famous tricks, pitted against death which he casts as a stone shadow. »Mine will be hell!«, Lord Byron heard him say.

On 29 October 1787, conducted by the composer, the overture to a dramma giocoso about the race with death of DON GIOVANNI begins with a piercing chord in the Graf Nostitz National Theatre in Prague. In retrospect, in the history of music theatre, this moment can be likened to the big bang. In order to set the mood for placing himself in the role of the unbridled libertine and blasphemer, the librettist Lorenzo da Ponte had to repeatedly flirt with the daughter of his landlady. Mozart himself, who had achieved success with his FIGARO one year before, composes under enormous pressure of time for a fee of 1000 guilders. The overture is completed only by 7 p.m. on the evening of the first performance. Søren Kierkegaard sees a »bolt of lightning« that » makes its own way from the darkness of the storm cloud, more unsettled than this and yet just as steady in time. Hear the emotion of unbridled desire, hear the rustle of love, hear the murmur of temptation, hear the turmoil of seduction, hear the moment of stillness – hear, hear, hear Mozart's DON GIOVANNI!«

The descent into hell to which the archetype of moral abjection was condemned until now is seen in terms of his soul. For his demise, the entire metaphysics of the west is called into play. But this not only confirms the indignation of the persons wronged, it also elicits dismay. At the threshold of the French revolution, the freedom that the libertine extols against the decree of humility characterises him as the very prototype of anarchy. His unbridled manner, peeled from a life designed from hormonal dictates, reflects the compulsive longings and self-realisation fantasies of generations to follow.

The 19th century will reveal his close relation to the figure of Faust, melancholically leaving him to the realm of psychoanalysis. Julia Kristeva finds in him the »son of a mother who becomes a dreamer with her husband and passes this on to her child that he may conquer all women as no one ever before «. Albert Camus finds it improbable that he could experience sadness. As with the »laughing, the victorious impudence, the erratic«, the profoundly mundane that the French philosopher diagnoses in him, can in fact be deceiving! – The restless figure ponders with D. H. Lawrence: »Where is there peace for me? The mystery must fall in love with me …«

What drives the seducer through the bedrooms of the centuries? What haunts the hunter? Who is this man really, who always means only?

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»Don Juan is the irreplaceable symbol of certain basic concerns that beset people, an imperishable aesthetic category, a myth of the human soul. In the gleaming zodiac of life's problems Don Juan also has his place beside Heracles and Helena, beside Hamlet and Faust and from the soul eternally radiates his ritualistic starlight in an exciting shimmer that is half charm and half despair into the night.« José Ortega y Gasset

»Strictly speaking, it is no longer your room but the erstwhile room of your childhood that has now been abandoned, with its low-hanging curtains, a bed with a form that strikes one as mannered, and a dark chest beneath the window.
The guest sits on the edge of the bed. Due to its height, this is not very comfortable, so that he must stem the legs spread against the floor. As you, after casting an inexpressive glance towards him – who at best has the instinctive mistrust of a wild animal - snow bend over the chest to take out your valuable photo album and then return to him, nothing else occurs to her than to sit between his legs with her back on the bed. More precisely, she squeezes in between: and there she is not uncomfortable, because the legs of the young man - clad in a light, skin-tight cloth - are like two columns between which she can easily lower herself with nearly capricious elegance. Of course, if she were to only slightly turn around, she would have his lap before her, immaculate and filled with strength at the meeting point of the two protective columns. But she does not turn around: her glances wander almost beseechingly from the photo album to the guest's face, who smiles at her graciously in all his strength.
Questioningly, she gazes at him with her large, round eyes, her small mouth half open as with someone who suffers from nasal polyps. Then she lowers her eyes again to the photo album, leafs through it and with an assiduousness bordering on reverie seeks the other showpieces of her family memories.
And the guest smiles. Then he lays his hand in a natural, unexpected movement on his thigh, on his lap behind her back. With this movement she turns around and gazes – with her assiduous reverie – at his hand: Now she peers directly at him, endeavoured not to change her expression and to maintain the same light in her eyes. But he smiles, fatherly and motherly, with still greater warmth and, when she has become a lifeless, immobile being, he grasps her under the arms and pulls her up from the floor almost to himself.
The photo album falls to the floor, and their two mouths meet. It is the first kiss that she experiences, entirely rigid, their bodies fully in contact: on her knees and held by the strong arms of the young man for whom she is so light ...« Pier Paolo Pasolini