Overture: Don Giovanni

Mozart was happy in Prague. As he wrote on his first visit there in 1787, “I meet with all possible courtesies and honors here and it is indeed a very beautiful and pleasant place.” On that occasion he had been invited to the city as the composer of Le Nozze di Figaro, the succes of which led to the commission of Don Giovanni to be performed at the National Theatre later in the year. The new opera was a triumph, in spite of a serious shortage of rehearsal time. Indeed, the overture, which was written on the night before the first performance, was not rehearsed at all. Although the Prague orchestra would have been familiar with the music of the Andante introduction, which is much the same as that which accompanies the chilling entry of the effigy of the Commendatore towards the end of the opera, the following Molto allegro must have been new to them. “Some of the notes fell under the desks,” the composer reported, “but the Overture went remarkably well on the whole.”

By all accounts - and there is no reason to disbelieve them - the Overture to Don Giovanni was written in the early hours of the morning preceding the first performance of the opera on 29 October 1787. According to the same accounts, there was no time to rehearse the new material and the orchestra had to play it at sight. “Some of the notes fell under the desks,” the composer reported from Prague, “but the Overture went remarkably well on the whole.”

Actually, the orchestra at the Ständetheater was already familiar with the music of the Andante introduction since it is much the same as that which accompanies the chilling entry of the effigy of the Commendatore towards the end of the opera: the fortissimo chords of D minor, the ominously throbbing rhythms in the strings (against which the Commendatore sings the dread words “Don Giovanni, you invited me to dinner and I have come”), the eerily winding syncopations, the sinister rise and fall of minor scales on flutes and violins… The Molto allegro begins by anticipating the spirit of the joyful closing ensemble of the opera. In spite of its basic D major tonality, however, it is masterfully contrived in its dynamic and harmonic colouring to suggest something of the stress and intrigue of the drama that is to follow. In the opera it leads directly into the F major opening scene. In the concert version of the Overture it turns back to a happy D major.