Programs · Episode

Don Giovanni – Likeable Villain

Aired: Wednesday, March 28, 2018 @ 9:00 am
Hosted by Miles Hoffman

One of the reasons Mozart’s operas seem so profound to us is because they’re so true to life, and perhaps especially true to life’s complexities and contradictions.

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One of the reasons Mozart’s operas seem so profound to us is because they’re so true to life, and perhaps especially true to life’s complexities and contradictions. Take the character of Don Giovanni; he’s a seducer and a killer.  But Mozart doesn’t make him a cartoon villain, in fact, he does the opposite: he makes him appealing.  He gives him beautiful music to sing.  But here is what’s so fascinating and a stroke of genius on Mozart’s part: every beautiful note that Don Giovanni sings is a lie. Mozart uses beautiful music to show the danger of beauty and to show that beauty itself can be false, and that music itself can be false.

It would have been so much easier to make Don Giovanni a sort of “barking bad guy” and singer of nasty songs, but Mozart’s way is much more profound.  It’s not just true to life; it’s true to the painful ironies of life.

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