Interviewed - Marco Boemi

Conductor’s explication

Masterly ruling tragic and comic situations, individual and common scenes and vocal and instrumental parts, Mozart composed, as he used to say, his most serious opera, a bit later described as "a work without blemish, an interrupted perfection" by the philosopher Kierkegaard . How do you professionally, but also intimately, experience this masterpiece that has been conquering audiences around the world for over two centuries?

Don Giovanni, which is regarded as both a romantic and neoclassical opera, really represents something special. It is so specific, and again, so different and that is why I definitely see it in my ten favorite operas. The combination of characters is so amazing that it must provoke interest in conductors born in the romantic period. There is a complete musical perfection in this opera, as well as the balance between the arias and the duets, so for the conductor it is absolutely amazing to observe how the tempo is constantly changing. Of course, you can conduct in the same tact, which is due to the fact that in Mozart's time, when there were no conductors, the orchestra itself could change the tempo without the conductor's instructions. The way Mozart put it in the flow of music is truly amazing. Also, I want to mention one thing about the finals where Mozart used three different small orchestras on the stage and although each is playing at different tempo, all three are merging and creating some sort of stereophonic sound. This tells us enough, since it was completely unknown at the time, how different Mozart was from other composers of his time. Also, the use of solo instruments, especially the wind instruments, such as the trumpet, is amazing. As soon as they begin to play, it is noticeable that there is a change in music.

The same happens in the big finale with the Commendatore, when the ground opens and he drags Don Giovanni with him into hell...

It is symbolic that Don Giovanni does not make any resistance, as he is ready to accept his destiny. He has decided to die and no one but him can make such a decision on his behalf, even at the cost of going to hell ... So, at some points there is something that reminds me of the use of the leitmotif in Wagner's music, although there isn’t a special leitmotif in terms of melody that would belong to a particular character. In any case, there are certain music cells. They can be instrumental, hidden, and might also exist in rhythm since it is absolutely necessary for description of characters. There are a number of great features of this score that cannot be understood at first listening, especially if the audience consists of people who are not musicians. Of course, for musicians, it's a real pleasure to find all these features, while the amazing thing for those who are not musicians is how they accept and feel all that is happening on the scene, even though they do not know the way Mozart made it possible.

The librettist Lorenzo da Ponte and Mozart considered this opera to be cheerful and comic. Regarding the fact that death is seen at the beginning and at the end of the work of art, is Don Giovanni, in your opinion, a tragedy or a comedy?

Since it has the perfect balance between comedy and tragedy, it is very difficult to say whether Don Giovanni is more this or that. But when you see that drama giocoso or a playful drama is written at the beginning of the opera, you will realize that Mozart has managed to find one incredible and perfect balance between comedy and tragedy, which means he has succeeded in presenting his life. Of course, life is not completely black or white, but it can be playful and painful at the same time or at different moments. So, what is particularly great in this music score is that Mozart succeeded in combining elements of tragedy (at the beginning and at the end of the opera we have death) and comedy. It is very interesting that for a long time, and especially in the beginning of the last century, Mahler, for example, conducted this opera in Vienna without a finale. Taking into account that it ends with Don Giovanni's death, the balance, or the life cycle, is better represented in this way - we begin with death and finish with another death.

And yet, Mozart did it differently?

Yes, he decided to finish the comedy. All the characters are talking about Don Giovanni, but they are more focused on what will be happening to them when they return to their usual life. Thus, Donna Elvira will retreat into solitude, Don Ottavio is forced to wait for a year before he can marry Donna Anna, Leporello will look for a new master, while Zerlina and Masetto will simply go home and she will probably prepare him some fine dinner...

Life must go on.

Exactly. He continues in spite of all these incredible supernatural things that have happened. Everyone would rather choose to leave the symbol of the supernormal in the sphere of symbols and to continue with daily, normal life. The way Mozart connects and balances between real and supernatural to achieve the perfection is something he failed to achieve in other operas. All other operas, including The Marriage of Figaro and Cosi fan tutte marriage, although being wonderful masterpieces, are still more on the side of comedy. So, there is nowhere such a wonderful balance, as all other operas are more focused on one side of life, or perhaps, they focus mainly on one side, and quite a bit on the other. This is the only opera where you can really feel that a large number of different factors are united, but yet each has an incredible and perfect place among all others.

According to one historian, Mozart had the exceptional ability to flow into his music all, even totally opposite currents of time, and thus united in the new parts, he would give birth to them again.  In this respect, what exactly did he do in this opera to separate it in a special way from all others he composed?

If you observe seven important operas, the only one that has the incredible balance between pain and joy, feeling and lucidity is exactly Don Giovanni. The only opera comparable with it, but in a completely different level, is the The Magic Flute, because it is about life, but the characters are not so clearly featured as good or bad ones, for example Sarastro and the Queen of the Night. So the characters are masked because of the story itself. The Magic Flute is the opera that can be read in different ways, with different meanings and symbols, and it is the most symbolic of all Mozart's operas. The Marriage of Figaro is the opera where social differences are sharply presented, but the characters in it do not have to face the drama of making choices that mean life or death to them. This is something we find only with Don Giovanni. Figaro can oppose the Count because he knows that nothing terrible can happen to him, but Don Giovanni knows that if he opposes God that he probably believes in, it can mean he will finish cursed or dead, although he does not believe in the curse and hell and, in a way, he is pleased that he can go beyond his destiny and explore everything life has offered him, on the condition that he refuses to give up his feelings. The opera Cosi fan tutte is incredibly beautiful, everything is perfectly fit in, there is a dilemma and an explanation afterwards. Perhaps there is a bit of bitterness but it never turns into tragedy. It is a real life but seen through the eyes of different people, like the philosopher Alfonso, or through the eyes of somebody who is ironic, but the characters never actually have to face tragedy.  My first opera has been The Clemency of Titus, which also has an interesting psychological side, but does not have the same beauty of the melody and instrumentation. What makes Don Giovanni so exceptional and different from other operas is its perfection in the sense of balance between drama and comedy, which means it presents life just as it really is.   

Don Juan - an intriguing legendary Spanish nobleman and an unscrupulous seducer whose character Mozart has used to compose this opera, belongs as Faust, Hamlet or Don Quixote to those characters in literature who have, by their strength and stratification, grown out the frames of the work where they appear and turned into wide, generally known concepts of a certain philosophical ethical meaning. Whether and to what extent, thanks to the scenes of encountering the earthly and other world and revealing the contradictory feelings of fear and defiance of the main hero, who is punished with death because he has not obeyed the existing laws and customs, this piece of art actually announced the epoch of musical romance, by some elements it could be said verismo as well, which appeared after more than a century?

This is a very interesting question, since it emphasizes the symbolic meaning of the character of Don Giovanni, in terms of character, psychological type and a character in opera. Don Giovanni, along with other so-called archetypes of the Western culture, such as Faust, Don Quixote, Carmen, belongs to characters that go beyond regional significance and tend to represent something else and specific for each culture and for each period. For example, Don Quixote was seen as the symbol of freedom, especially in the period of Romanticism, but this is completely beyond the adventures given in Cervantes' book. The melancholic character is typical of the heroes, but when Massenet wrote his opera about Don Quixote, he was looking at that character with his eyes of romance and gave him some feelings that were surely exaggerated compared to the original Cervantes’ intention, for he had been completely holding into the frame of his culture and his society. Thus, Don Quixote has overcome the original character he emerged from. Don Giovanni definitely has a more open character. He can be observed with different eyes and through different cultures. He can be considered a romantic hero, which he really is in my opinion. There are different opinions about him, especially negative when it comes to ethical and moral attitudes. This is typical, for example, for Kierkegaard, who used Don Giovanni as a negative symbol, saying that people can be divided into two categories. One category could be represented by Don Giovanni as a symbol of a person who can never be satisfied with what he has in life and love, which, from a religious standpoint, is not right. Kierkegaard regarded faithfulness as one of the most important things in man's life, so Don Giovanni was therefore considered a negative symbol. However, the Romantic Movement has definitely gone beyond this idea, and Don Giovanni is regarded as a symbol of a person who defies society, laws, tradition and order, opposes religious beliefs and thinks that he has the right to fully live his own life without regard to the courts and the beliefs of others. As far as I'm concerned, this is what makes him one of the most interesting characters in literature and music.

It is clear that Mozart is also sympathetic to this hero...

Yes. And he himself, in a certain way, could be regarded as a renegade of society. Don Giovanni never fears what he is doing. He knows very well that freedom can cause certain consequences, although they can have a fatal outcome, which happens in his case. Don Giovanni knows that, if you resist the rules, you have to pay a certain price. He is, of course, fully prepared to pay the price for his rebellion and he does not regret since he thinks he has the right to choose how he will live his life, for that is the top value he cares for. Among others, he rejects Donna Elvira because he is not attracted to the idea of an ordinary, boring family and boring life, always with the same woman. Today, in Italy, we say, "I'm going to do Don Juan," which means that someone will seduce a woman. This is the transposition of meaning. It's not about women here. They are just an outer, surface part.

It is interesting that in this Mozart’s piece of art Don Giovanni never manages to go to bed with a woman?

In each situation when he is close to the end of seduction, something occurs and the seduction is ceased. For example, at the beginning when Leporello asks him for Donna Anna, he angrily tells him to shut up. If he had been with Donna Anna, he would have shared that success with Leporello. The same happens with Zerlina and Donna Elvira. Thus, we can conclude that Don Giovanni is not that successful with women and some dare to say that he actually has some sexual problems. On the other hand, some go so far as to consider "there is something" between Don Giovanni and Leporello, as he, when trying to avoid other characters who want to kill him, declares: "Don Giovanni stole my innocence." That could, of course, be symbolic, but physical as well. It is very interesting that Mozart leaves Don Giovanni unspoken. Nevertheless, it is quite clear that Don Giovanni would never accept a discussion about his right and obligation to make his own choices and entirely live the whole life just as he wants. His desires are directed to enjoyment. That's the only thing he cares about. He is not interested in moral values. He has them, truthfully, but they have nothing in common with the moral values ​​of other people ... Since Don Giovanni is also a man of blood and flesh, and his vital, flaming determination to enjoy life can be felt right out of music. Regarding the fact that he still does not belong to his own time, he is definitely the man who announces romanticism.

In that period, music became more emotional and it was following literature, philosophy and art.

When it comes to music, I consider romanticism the positive moment of culture, unlike verismo in which the singers forgot the "correct" way of singing. They began to make every kind of change and keep moving further from what was written to make something more realistic than real. Verismo has changed the approach to singing and music itself, and we have been suffering for years, decades from that and sometimes it is happening even today. So, when it comes to access to music, romanticism is completely different. In that sense, when you ask me if Don Giovanni, when the music is in question, announces verismo, my answer is of course- no. His character is too complex, and in verismo life is presented in its reality and it has not gone into depth or any further. But, in the sense of music, of course, Don Giovanni announces romanticism, even when it comes to his words, his irony that he involves into singing. Although he is a hero and a nobleman, he expresses so much of sarcasm and irony typical of an ordinary man. You will never find it at Donna Anna and Ottavio because they will never laugh, as they think that this is not the proper behavior for a person of the noble origin. So, regardless the fact that he is a nobleman, Don Giovanni does not care about social limitations at all. We have that same idea even in The Marriage of Figaro while it does not exist in Cosi fan tutte. When we make a distinction between Don Giovanni and other operas from the music and psychological point of view, here we see that music and orchestration is not only definitely stronger, but it is also deeper and more detailed than in many other operas. Of course, in some ways, there is the use of a leitmotif, but it is different in relation to Wagner's operas. Also, some melodies are definitely more romantic than in other operas. In The Marriage of Figaro you have several magical and romantic moments, for example in the aria Countess, forgive me!, but besides that there is no other way of expressing feelings in such a deep way as it has later been done during romanticism.

Interviewed by Mikojan Bezbradica