Post by tango7 on Sept 3, 2015 12:26:10 GMT
"Don Giovanni" was presented for the first time in Prague, because Mozart, satisfied with the manner in which Bondini’s troupe had sung his "Marriage of Figaro" a little more than a year before, had agreed to write another work for the same house.
The story on which da Ponte based his libretto - the statue of a murdered man accepting an insolent invitation to banquet with his murderer, appearing at the feast and dragging him down to hell - is very old. It goes back to the Middle Ages, probably further. A French authority considers that da Ponte derived his libretto from "Le Festin de Pierre", Moliere’s version of the old tale. Da Ponte, however, made free use of "Il Convitato di Pietra" ("The Stone-Guest"), a libretto written by the Italian theatrical poet Bertati for the composer Giuseppe Gazzaniga. Whoever desires to follow up this interesting phase of the subject will find the entire libretto of Bertati’s Convitato" reprinted, with a learned commentary by Chrysander, in volume iv of the Vierteljahrheft für Musikwissenschaft (Music Science Quarterly), a copy of which is in the New York Public Library.
Mozart agreed to hand over the finished score in time for the autumn season of 1787, for the sum of one hundred ducats ($240). Richard Strauss receives for a new opera a guarantee of ten performances at a thousand dollars - $10,000 in all - and, of course, his royalties thereafter. There is quite a distinction in these matters between the eighteenth century and the present. And what a lot of good a few thousand dollars would have done the impecunious composer of the immortal "Don Giovanni"! Also, one is tempted to ask oneself if any modern ten thousand dollar opera will live as long as the two hundred and forty dollar one, which already is 130 years old.
source www.musicwithease.com/
The story on which da Ponte based his libretto - the statue of a murdered man accepting an insolent invitation to banquet with his murderer, appearing at the feast and dragging him down to hell - is very old. It goes back to the Middle Ages, probably further. A French authority considers that da Ponte derived his libretto from "Le Festin de Pierre", Moliere’s version of the old tale. Da Ponte, however, made free use of "Il Convitato di Pietra" ("The Stone-Guest"), a libretto written by the Italian theatrical poet Bertati for the composer Giuseppe Gazzaniga. Whoever desires to follow up this interesting phase of the subject will find the entire libretto of Bertati’s Convitato" reprinted, with a learned commentary by Chrysander, in volume iv of the Vierteljahrheft für Musikwissenschaft (Music Science Quarterly), a copy of which is in the New York Public Library.
Mozart agreed to hand over the finished score in time for the autumn season of 1787, for the sum of one hundred ducats ($240). Richard Strauss receives for a new opera a guarantee of ten performances at a thousand dollars - $10,000 in all - and, of course, his royalties thereafter. There is quite a distinction in these matters between the eighteenth century and the present. And what a lot of good a few thousand dollars would have done the impecunious composer of the immortal "Don Giovanni"! Also, one is tempted to ask oneself if any modern ten thousand dollar opera will live as long as the two hundred and forty dollar one, which already is 130 years old.
source www.musicwithease.com/
