ABSTRACT
Chapter 4, ‘The party episode’, examines the champagne aria and the Act I finale. In Tirso de Molina’s play, in the commedia dell’arte adaptations and in Karl von Marinelli’s play, Don Juan interrupts a peasant wedding and seduces the bride, his offence justifying the stone guest’s fatal interruption of his supper later on. In the opera, however – apparently inspired by an episode from Giacomo Casanova’s life – it is Don Giovanni who hosts the wedding, while it is the masked guests who offend the rules of hospitality when they ambush him. In the original production, the party episode was experienced by the audience as the festive highpoint of Act I, culminating with Bassi as Don Giovanni dancing first the minuet and then the contredanse with Zerlina. The enraged reaction of his adversaries to his attempted seduction of the peasant bride can be construed as an allegorical satire of the theatrical censorship of the time. But with Friedrich Rochlitz’s singing translation, E. T. A. Hoffmann’s novella and the performance traditions that they generated, the aria became expressive of Don Giovanni’s rage, his attempts to seduce Zerlina became rape attempts, and the social condemnation of the other characters was turned into divine wrath.
