Introduction
When it comes to Mozart we enter a different world, full of surprises and dominated by the unexpected that seemed to flow so naturally out of his mind. Way ahead of his own time, his operas are a marvel in the subtle depictions of the characters. But most of all, his characters are humans, with all their ups and downs, strengths and weaknesses that we can all recognize ourselves into.
Certainly part of it is due to the libretto. It’s a fact that most successful operas in history came from a fruitful collaboration between the librettist and the composer: Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal, or Giacomo Puccini and the duo Luigi Illica-Giovanni Giacosa.
In Mozart’s case, the magic happened with librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte. Mozart had already worked with him on Le Nozze di Figaro which premiered in Vienna in 1786 but had its greatest success in Prague. And it is from Prague that the commission for his next opera came from.
Posthumous portrait of Mozart by Barbara Krafft (1819)
The opera is labeled as a dramma giocoso, which means a playful drama, a mix of serious and comical. This aspect is reflected entirely in the Ouverture.
While the overture to Le Nozze di Figaro is sparkling in the spirit of the subtitle – La folle journée (“The mad day”), the Ouverture to Don Giovanni depicts the alternating aspects of serious mood and comical relief.
There is one other really important matter: up to this point, the Ouverture was used as an introduction, to tell the audience that the show was about to begin and to set the mood of what was about to come.
Mozart adds an extra element, which will be so successful in the future: the Ouverture opens with a theme from the opera. Or rather, with a motivic element that will return at the very end, with the reappearance of the Commendatore.
This is groundbreaking and anticipates a concept that will be developed over and over again: a motive or a theme tied to a character, a situation, or an emotion. The mind goes immediately to the use of leitmotiv in Wagner.
Andante
Should you need a score you can find one here.
We begin with an ominous D minor chord in syncopation, mirrored by a dominant chord
The idea is extended: flutes and clarinets move from D to A while the strings accompany with a dotted rhythm. The harmony however undergoes subtle changes, starting with that bass line moving down chromatically.
Incidentally, we’ve seen the use of chromatism in Mozart in the episode dedicated to another Prague work, the symphony K504 – curiously also in the key of D.
The line keeps moving down, the color darkened by the entrance of the trumpets and timpani on bar 9 and the syncopations return in the first violins on bar 11. The use of syncopation here creates anxiety and anticipation.
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Molto allegro
The theme begins with a chromatism – what a surprise. And then adds a syncopated element. Only, this time, the syncopation is not used to create anxiety or tension but as a propeller. The energy increases. You can feel the palpitation in the descending 8th notes of the first violins to which all winds plus the timpani answer
The phrase is repeated with a brief flute counterline and we swiftly move into a vortex of notes, started by the violins and shortly joined by everyone else
As I mentioned earlier, this opera is all about contrasts: we move into A major with a forte tutti chord which leaves room immediately to descending scales in piano
The model is repeated twice, and Mozart gives us a more gentle moment: oboes and clarinets in thirds, an octave apart, sustained by a pedal of the horns and repeated notes of the violins. Only the violins mind you, no violas or cellos, keeping everything very light
But wait: this moment lasts only 5 bars. A crescendo of the violins brings everyone back, precipitating everything in A minor in a forte dynamic
The phrase ends on the dominant. Is there a second theme coming perhaps? More gentle and relaxed – or feminine if you wish? Not quite. What we are faced with are a series of questions and answers. A very assertive question in a very masculine tone followed by a more feminine answer, played only by the violins and violas
You could see in this a number of things: the bravado of Don Giovanni opposed to the fearsome Leporello; or the feisty Donna Elvira opposed to the more submissive Donna Anna; or the audacity of Don Giovanni, taking on the world, opposed to Masetto, doomed to be subdued. Take your pick.
The strong motive becomes the object of a musical game: first it echoes in 3 different stages in the violins, in the couple oboe-bassoon, and in the flutes
and then it turns into a dialogue between flute and oboe, landing eventually on the end of this first part, which, by the way, reuses that same whirling technique we’ve seen in bars 46 and following
The development begins with the very same motives but…
First change: the second time, Mozart moves 3 notes, giving us a heads up on what’s about to happen. The game seems to proceed in the same way, with the motive bouncing between woodwinds and strings. But the accompaniment in the woodwinds dialogue is now offered by the second motivic element, which is moving back and forth between the first and second violins
Mozart plays with the mind and ears of the audience with a cascade of aural inputs coming from everywhere. Surprise: the first theme reappears, in G major
Briefly. Everything is transformed in a modulation that leaves us suspended on an F major chord
And a succession of modulating models using the 2 motives creates the core of this development
We’re led back to an A pedal which concludes the development and eventually takes us back to the recapitulation
That’s right, we are basically in a standard sonata form, including a slow introduction and a coda. The coda is where Mozart gives us another surprise. Normally, we would expect this kind of piece to end with fireworks, getting big audience applause after its final chord.
However, Mozart here is experimenting, as we’ve seen right from the introduction. This Ouverture is not just a separate piece meant to tell the audience that the show is about to begin. It’s part of the opera. The action has already begun, the story has already started, and Mozart eases us into the next scene with a short coda, in a piano dynamic, which is, in fact, simply a modulating bridge
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