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1. Mozart and DaPonte call Don Giovanni an opera buffa (comic opera). Do you agree? What makes an opera comic? What other examples do you know of tragic elements in comedy, and vice versa?
2. If you could have a conversation with one or more characters in Don Giovanni, who would you talk to? What would you tell them? How might they react?
3. Consider the role of Leporello. How does his relationship with Don Giovanni compare with, say, a confidante to a lead soprano?
4. Do you ever have a “Leporello” in your life? If not, what if you did—what would it be like to be your servant/sidekick?
5. The first Don Juan was written by a seventeenth-century priest as a morality play. Mozart and Da Ponte’s full title for their opera is Il dissolutopunito, ossia Il Don Giovanni (“The Libertine Punished, or Don Giovanni”). Do we still sense a lesson when we watch Don Giovanni? Do you think the opera’s first audiences in Prague (1787) and Vienna (1788) appreciated the lesson?
TICKETS | SYNOPSIS | LOVER, LIAR, LIBRETTIST, LIBRARIAN? | MOZART MYTHS | DISCUSSION QUESTIONS | MORE TO EXPLORE
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