I, Don Giovanni

Richard Jones' Movie Review

WHEN the great composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote his opera Don Giovanni he engaged the librettist Lorenzo da Ponte.

Da Ponte was something of an unusual choice. He was the protégé of the great libertine, Casanova, or so the folklore goes.

The route Spanish director Carlos Saura takes us to the eventual staging of Mozart’s opera starts two decades earlier.

The librettist da Ponte (Lorenzo Balducci) is living in Venice. He’s a close friend of Casanova (Tobias Moretti), but despite his earlier career as a priest finds himself exiled from Venice because of his licentious behavior.

Da Ponte ends up in Vienna in 1781 collaborating with Mozart (Lino Guanciale). Casanova had engineered the meeting between the two through the Viennese court’s in-house composer Salieri.

As Mozart and da Ponte go to work on the new opera, it becomes clear that even though the fictional Don Giovanni is the key character, he’s really modelled on Casanova.Composer and librettist get down to work. Mozart is plagued by ill health while da Ponte has some competing, romantic interests in his life.

Besotted by the beautiful Annetta (Emilia Verginelli) he also has a couple of demanding divas to contend with, not to mention Casanova’s treacherous wheelings and dealings.

Da Ponte’s problems with Annetta are of his own making. Aware of his reputation she is determined not to just become another one of his trophies.

Mozart also has a problem. His is one of perception. Just how are his audiences going to take to Don Giovanni.

The opera’s central character is a thoroughly modern man  -- a free thinker who defies God and organized religion.