Don Giovanni

Sex and loneliness...

Don Giovanni is addicted to seduction. He feeds off the adulation of women. It seems pretty clear that it's the women's reaction to him that he gets off on, not the women themselves, since we learn from Leporello (No. 4) that it really doesn't matter to him what they look like, who they are, very old, very young, anything will do. It's the thrill of seduction that he craves.

Though how thrilling can it be if he's done it so often? He must know by now that he's pretty good at it. Maybe then it's really the sex he's addicted to. You don't look at the mantelpiece when you're stoking the fire.

Well, there are elements of both, probably. But perhaps the real issue is fear of loneliness. With each woman, he is trying to escape from himself. He doesn't cope well with inactivity and he craves the adoration of women. Except that like every addict, he realises with each fix that he needs more and more and yet it's getting less and less satisfying. The older he gets, the more he realises that he thought this lifestyle was what he wanted but it doesn't make him happy.

He's probably been right on the point of acknowledging this just before the opera starts, because we learn from Elvira that he spent three days with her in Burgos. Were they just alternating sex and tapas the whole time? Why is she so heartbroken then? Just because she's a hysterical crazy? If she's that nuts, why spend three whole days with her? Three days is a long time in the company of someone you can't stand. More likely she's mad because she knew she had something real with him. He probably told her all about his misogyny and where it stems from. He sobbed on her shoulder while she soothed his aching soul and made him chicken soup. They had deep, gazing into each other's eyes, where have you been all my life sex, the kind of sex he hasn't had probably his entire life, and he probably believed he was turning his back on his libertine lifestyle forever. And then - something happened. He got scared. Maybe he saw some achingly beautiful model on the way to buy prawns for the paella and never came back. She spends most of the opera furious with him - usually assumed to be because she can't forgive him for abandoning her - then turns up at the end trying, compassionately, to save him - usually interpreted as a transformation. 'Anna and Zerlina are essentially the same all the way through', directors tell us, 'but Elvira is on a journey'. Perhaps. But maybe the fury and the compassion stem from the same source: she knows that he is his own worst enemy, she knows that really he loves her as she loves him, but some urge is impelling him to self-destruct instead of give in to it. The reason she's so damn pissed off is because she feels she is so maddeningly close - she's SEEN what he's like when he is 'good'. Unlike the rest of us. She knows there is more to him than the act he puts on for the thousands of women he seduces and - how lonely is this? - even the damn audience don't realise it - it just makes her want to cry for frustration. It's her against the entire world and she knows she's right and she is right, dammit, but the more she shouts and screams about it the more everyone just thinks she's a hysterical nut-job and tries not to make eye contact.

...and death

So you think he's basically in love with Elvira but in denial.

Yes, exactly. He can't admit it to himself and even if he could, the addiction to other women is too much of a habit to shake off.

So after her, he's screwed either way.

Irredeemably. Those three days in Burgos with her (see recit before No. 4) - he hasn't experienced anything like that for a long time, maybe ever. But he knows he can't keep it up - become conventional, recycle his plastics, collect garden gnomes, get life insurance. It isn't him. He desperately wants to go back to the life he was leading before and he tries everything to cheer himself up - like a gambler throwing good money after bad - each exploit bigger than the last. Had he ever killed anyone before the opera? Probably not. Had he seduced married women (recit after No. 5) - for sure, but on their wedding day, right under their husbands' noses? This is not the behaviour of someone wanting to carry on doing what they're doing for many happy years. This is someone almost with a death-wish.

Hang on, though, the fight with the Commendatore isn't planned. He tries to avoid it. (No. 1)

Sure, that's true. But in that moment where he decides to fight after all ('Misera, attendi, se vuoi morir!') he still makes a conscious decision. He's a smart enough character to extricate himself without doing that if he wants. He's in such a mood of, ah, FUCK it I just don't care any more, he's in that state you get into when you're emotionally overworked where the effort of any decision, even a small one, just becomes too much, and you become passive. Like when the waiter comes with the dessert menu after you've been having an intense, soul-wrenching discussion about whether or not you ever really got over your ex and you just wish someone would come and tell you whether you want profiteroles or apple tart because after all that it's just too much. Taken to its extreme, you become passive about whether you can be bothered with the effort of carrying on living at all. That's what's happening to Giovanni right from the start of the opera.

Culminating in -

- right, the final scene, where he is offered one last chance to repent before being dragged off to hell.

So he consciously decides he'd rather die?

That's too strong. He doesn't view it as wanting to die. He just can't face the thought of repenting, changing his lifestyle, all that taking responsibility and making conscious decisions - like a morbidly overweight person who doesn't exactly want to die of heart disease but the effort of breaking the pattern is just too much. They know they have to if they want to live much longer but the fear of change is greater than the fear of death.



Don Ottavio: honourable nobleman or vain fop?

'Every production of Don Giovanni I've ever worked on starts with everyone agreeing that Don Ottavio shouldn't be a wet, weak character. But he always ends up being, just the same.' - a very talented director at the first rehearsal for a new production, in which precisely that happened.

The textbook view on Don Ottavio is that he really loves Donna Anna and means everything he promises her about avenging her father's death (see e.g. no. 2, no. 10, no. 13, no. 21) - he's just a bit too ineffective. Or, according to one variant of the view, he says he won't rest until Giovanni is dead, and in fact he's as good as his word, even if he doesn't deal the blow himself. He is, one director said to me, the only uncontroversially good character in the opera - in fact, he is the standard against which all others can be judged.

But does he really try that hard? I think there's a better explanation. We all know the stereotype of the lazy rich kid - a character a bit like the portrayal of Edward VIII in The King's Speech - laconic, a bit bored by life, faintly amused by parties and perhaps drugs, not much interested in hard work or sacrifice, enormously vain and self-involved, incapable of real love but needy and attention-seeking. They are good talkers and good at making people like them, harmless enough so long as one doesn't rely on them for anything. In good times they're good company, in a crisis they are everything but dependable. This is Don Ottavio. He flails about at the murder scene (no 2), giving absurd orders to get the dead body out of Anna's sight so as not to upset her and bring her some smelling salts, without ever actually doing anything. He spends as long as he possibly can trying to avoid the conclusion that Don Giovanni is responsible - it would be inconvenient. A fellow nobleman... Daddy used to go hunting with his brother... good sort of family... seems a bit far-fetched. Look at the recit after no 10 - Anna has just shrieked on for a good 7 minutes about how this man has murdered her father and he scratches his head and asks - 'is it possible that under the pretence of friendship he could be capable of such an act'? Why is he so doubtful? Simple - he doesn't want to believe it because as long as he avoids the uncomfortable conclusion, the longer he can put off doing anything about it. Only in the recit before Il mio tesoro (no. 21) is he finally ready to accept what has been clear to everyone else since way before the interval that 'there can be no more doubting it'. Must be pretty frustrating for Donna Anna being engaged to someone who has that little faith in what she says.

One can't help wondering, if one follows this line of thinking, if he's any more motivated about pursuing her than about pursuing Giovanni. Maybe Giovanni comes along in the opening scene at just the right moment after she's given up hope of his (Ottavio's) ever getting it together to try something on with her. Ottavio and Anna have presumably been engaged virtually from the cradle by some kind of long-standing tacit understanding, so he hasn't ever had to do anything to show he's keen on her. Giovanni, whatever his faults, can't be accused of not showing interest. Perhaps she's thinking, well, it's about time someone noticed how horny I've been getting.

But look at the recit before 'Non mi dir' (no 23) - and indeed Ottavio & Anna's duet in the finale after Giovanni's death - Ottavio is hopping mad with sexual frustration.

Yes, we can see that he is pretty desperate to get in the sack with her by the end of the opera. But all he ever does is whine about it - and in the end accept he's not getting his way. He wants his way effort-free or not at all. He can muster neither valour nor ardour. He just whines.


Well, that's enough thoughts for now. Do you agree? What about Zerlina and Masetto, who I haven't mentioned once? I may come back to them - and indeed to Leporello, there's a lot to say about him. But that's enough to be going on with.