Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Don Giovanni

THE REVIEW

What is Don Giovanni? A musical work? A philosophical work? The sign of divinity on earth? What human mind could conceive something of such sublime beauty??

I often wonder why in school they bore us to death with a slew of depressed writers (Foscolo, Leopardi, Carducci, Svevo, Pirandello) and never make us study Mozart. Wouldn't the world be a better place if more people knew the sign of God on earth? Maybe I’m exaggerating...well.

Mozart remains the greatest mystery of human history, and the testament to how much man can elevate himself to the image and likeness of a deity, if there ever was one.... I think Don Giovanni has changed my life. In it, a certain way of living and looking at life is perfectly enclosed and expressed. Don Giovanni is the perfect embodiment of the moment, of the incredible force of life in ecstatic surrender to the instant. I do not have a technical approach to music, and I believe it’s wrong to have such an approach to a work like this, which is much, much more than a musical work.

Don Giovanni is the celebration of life and the moment, and Don Giovanni is the undisputed hero. There is no moral to uphold, and though in the final scene he is sent to the inferno by the Commendatore who returns ominously from the underworld, he does not emerge diminished or defeated. Whoever listens to the opera, whoever immerses themselves in it, will perceive that Don Giovanni is sanctified in the opera, and that every scene and character in the opera acquires its own weight and meaning only in relation to the knight. It is a sort of hall of mirrors and everyone reflects in Don Giovanni.

In the opera, Don Giovanni becomes a deity. It has often been said that it is the work in which more than any other Mozart tinges with romantic veins. But it would seem that Mozart was never a classic in the literal sense of the term. His classicism, his harmony has always been tinged with some latent passion. Mozart is the childish love for life. Don Giovanni is the perfect embodiment of this way of living life: with the exuberance of a child, seeking in everything (women are moments of this romantic search) the meaning and fullness of life.

And it acquires meaning in this energy, in this pursuit. In this experience, which is nothing but the endless search for a happy moment. And then another. And then yet another. And in this continuous striving, there is ecstasy and energy, there is that incredible energy deriving from wonder and search.

Long live Don Giovanni. Long live Mozart. Long live life.