ABSTRACT
Chapter 3, ‘Don Giovanni and the three women’, studies Don Giovanni’s encounters with the three female characters in the Act I street scene. As Don Giovanni, Luigi Bassi, possibly inspired by Giacomo Casanova, treated Donna Elvira with charming chivalrousness, Zerlina with exaggerated gallantry and Donna Anna with a mixture of veneration and tenderness, the behavioural contrasts involving distinct vocal colours. However, Friedrich Rochlitz’s German singing translation and later performance traditions fundamentally affected the portrayal of the women. Don Giovanni’s secret ex-lover Donna Elvira became his abandoned wife or fiancée, her attempt to win him back motivated less by possessive jealousy than by the need to save her honour or her seducer’s soul, as in Molière’s Dom Juan. The resourceful Zerlina, who is as much a seducer as Don Giovanni himself, became a guileless ingenue whose fascination with the unknown nobleman is mixed with fear. The aristocratic Donna Anna, who may have erred in a moment of weakness, became an image either of offended innocence or of irrepressible amorous passion. With the refashioning of the female characters, Don Giovanni’s behaviour towards them also changed, and he would now treat Donna Elvira rudely and threateningly, and Zerlina with predatorial condescension.
