Textual Polyphony in Mozart's Don Giovanni

<p>The usual reading of <i>Don Giovanni (DG)</i>, aside from political critique of aristocracy, sees it as an opera moralizing on the punishment of sin. The resulting interpretation descends from a literary tradition originating in counter-Reformation texts, starting with de Molina’s <i>El Burlador </i>and continuing with such acclaimed comedies as the commedia-dell’arte <i>L’ateista fulminato, </i>to Goldoni’s and Moliere’s Dons. Charles Russell presents Mozart’s and Da Ponte’s <i>DG </i>as “a culmination of a 150-year-old tradition … of all Don Juans who had come before” (<i>Don Juan Legend</i>, XXX<i>)</i>. This linear reading informs the widely shared interpretation that over the whole opera, from overture to finale, looms the sinner’s refusal to repent and inevitable condemnation to eternal punishment. I propose a different method that takes into account widely divergent but interlocking contemporary texts. I define this approach as polyphonic and contrapuntal: expanding the network of literary and non-literary texts from Mozart’s <i>Kyrie</i> <i>in C minor</i> to Da Ponte’s memoirs. My interpretation is that, from the overture onward, <strong>Mozart evokes the final call to repentance rather than damnation. </strong><i>Don Giovanni</i> dramatizes the offer of forgiveness, not its refusal.</p>