Binoy Kampmark: Carlos Saura’s Io, Don Giovanni

Don Giovanni is both a figure and theme. He is the figure who seems to bed every skirt he can find, but he is the man who loves all women but can possess none. It is not women he desires so much as Woman.

With the latest film featuring the creation of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Don Giovanni, there is perhaps some trepidation: why another interpretation of this surely worn subject of a rake’s journey gone wrong? The answer lies as much in Mozart’s genius as it does in the doomed protagonist of the opera. ‘With his Don Giovanni,’ wrote the Danish philosopher Søren Kirkeegaard in the nineteenth century, ‘Mozart joins that little immortal band of men whose names, whose works, time will not forget because eternity recollects them.’

The theme, re-examined by Carlos Saura, is endlessly fascinating, but that a good film does not make. There is an inherent flatness about the portrayal of Europe’s greatest seducer. Scenes hang awkwardly together. One never gets a full sense about the significance of Don Giovanni, though there are snatches throughout.

Perhaps Saura should not be blamed. The philosopher Bernard Williams did point out that the famous rake ‘seems to have no depth adequate to the work in which he plays the central role’. There is an open invitation to re-interpret the character. In Mozart’s version, he is a far from impressive figure, a bumbling failure in love, and eventually, in life. He does not, as was pointed out by Luigi Bassi, the first individual to play Don Giovanni in Prague, even have his own ‘proper’ aria (Guardian, Sep 5, 2008).

The opera’s origins are realised through through the standpoint of the librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte (Lorenzo Balducci). Famous arias are replayed on rich sets and with dramatic thrust. The focus is what makes this film interesting. The words behind the music, not merely the music itself, is what fascinates Saura. And Da Ponte remains an interesting figure: Jew turned Christian in 1763, a priest turned voluptuary, turned bordello operator and exile from Venice. Enter a productive union with Mozart (Lino Guanciale), and several operas (Le nozze di Figaro and Cosi fan tutte amongst them) follow, till their penultimate collaboration over Don Giovanni, which premiered in the Estates Theatre in Prague in 1787.

Da Ponte has his points of moral awakening. The librettist loosely bases his figure on the womanising achievements of Chevalier de Seingalt – or Casanova (Tobias Moretti) with a generous portion of his own life thrown in. In time, he becomes sentient about faithfulness. Twice he finds Annetta (Emilia Verginelli), daughter of a gambling acquaintance from Venice. She proceeds to transform Da Ponte from amoral libertine to moral punisher: Don Giovanni will have to perish for his misdeeds of the flesh and more to the point, the killing of the Commendatore, Lord of Seville and father of the violated Donna Anna. Hence, one of the most astonishing scenes in opera (and operatic hell) is realised. Indeed, the proper Italian title of the opera says it all: Il dissoluto punito ossia il Don Giovanni (The Punishment of the Libertine or Don Giovanni).

But for opera lovers, there is little doubt that this film, with its costume realisations and superb sound track, will appeal. As the theologian Karl Barth stated without reservation, ‘Mozart is universal.’

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com

© Scoop Media