ABSTRACT
Chapter 7, ‘The second finale’, examines the supper scene that concludes the opera. In the original production, the arrival of the stone guest represented a tragic incursion into the comic mood of the seducer’s supper. Bassi’s Don Giovanni took the stone guest for a human avenger or prankster – possibly, Masetto – until taking its hand. His horror when realising that the visitor is made of stone aroused the spectators’ compassion and awe in a manner reminiscent of the analysis of tragic pity and terror in Lessing’s Laocoön (1766). The final scene, in which the seducer’s enemies rejoice in his death, sets their hypocrisy off against the terrifying reality of his suffering in a parody of the morality of the traditional Stone Guest plays. Friedrich Rochlitz’s singing translation, however, not only made Don Giovanni behave with cruelty towards Leporello and Donna Elvira; he also turned the stone guest into a ghost reminiscent of Shakespearean tragedy: a reflection of the protagonist’s guilty conscience or of divine justice. Due to enduring radical changes in performance practice effected by this refashioning of the scene, this conception has survived into modern times where the moral proclaimed in the final scene is often taken at face value.
