Mozart finished Don Giovanni the night before Prague opened it
Il dissoluto punito, ossia il Don Giovanni—Mozart’s K. 527, words by Lorenzo Da Ponte—premiered at Prague’s National Theatre on 29 October 1787, the ink barely dry from the day before. A dramma giocoso of seduction, murder, and a stone guest, it remains a summit of the Da Ponte trilogy.
Commissioned after Mozart’s triumphant Prague stay in early 1787, the opera reworks the Don Juan legend Tirso de Molina staged in 1630, filtered through Giovanni Bertati’s 1787 Venice libretto Don Giovanni Tenorio. Da Ponte kept Bertati’s opening murder of the Commendatore and a vague “city in Spain.” A planned 14 October premiere for Archduchess Maria Theresa slipped; Figaro filled the gap until Mozart logged completion on 28 October. Prague’s press raved that the city had “never heard the like,” even while calling the score extremely difficult; Mozart conducted to jubilant welcome.
The orchestra fields double woodwinds, horns, trumpets, timpani, strings, and continuo, with trombones reserved for Act 2’s supernatural chill. End of Act 1 stages a compositional stunt: three dance bands in different metres—minuet, contradanse, peasant dance—playing at once with the pit. Giovanni strums a mandolin over pizzicato strings; the Commendatore’s warnings arrive in wind chorale. For Vienna’s 7 May 1788 premiere Mozart added Ottavio’s “Dalla sua pace,” Elvira’s “Mi tradì,” and a Leporello–Zerlina duet, trimming the finale—cuts rarely heard today, while modern houses often keep both Ottavio arias.
Onstage, the rake kills the Commendatore, catalogues conquests through Leporello (1,003 in Spain alone in the famous aria), hunts Zerlina, and mocks every vow until something he cannot outwit arrives. Nineteenth-century habit dropped the final moralising ensemble after the first Prague night; twentieth-century practice restored it. Fiona Maddocks groups the work with Mozart’s other Da Ponte masterpieces—proof Prague knew what it had heard.
Source: Don Giovanni
