ABSTRACT
The reasons for the perennial fascination of Don Juan are complex. Early audiences must have derived a good deal of vicarious pleasure from seeing someone break the rules of sexual morality and cock a snook at authority. Since the theme of Don Juan, as transmitted through the centuries, casts woman as the victim, Don Juan as a character would probably fill most women with revulsion, unless he were shown as overtaken by retribution of some kind, or ‘redeemed’ through Mozart’s music, or represented as overcoming his philandering instincts and sublimating his energies. The Don Juan legend is something like a popular tune on which countless composers have written variations – and it would hardly occur to us to accuse Beethoven of flagging originality because he did not always trouble himself to invent original themes.
