“Là ci darem la mano” from Don Giovanni (1787)

Perhaps the most challenging of the many problems Mozart had to face in Don Giovanni was to write music so irresistibly attractive that no one could doubt his hero’s fabled powers of seduction. He takes on the challenge as early as the middle of the first act, where he presents Giovanni in action with the peasant girl Zerlina. Although she is just about to be married to Masetto, she succombs to his preposterous but charmingly put proposition that he, a nobleman, will marry her instead. The decisive factor in his strategy is his “Là ci darem la mano” – a simple but caressing melody astutely chosen for this particular victim – which meets with little resistance as it develops into a rapturous little duet of mutual consent.