Lyric Opera 2019-2020 Issue 5 Don Giovanni

Lyric Opera of Chicago | 30 by a vain competition between men: the body affirms what hierarchical culture so often denies. James Joyce knew what he was doing in Ulysses when he imagined the earthy Molly Bloom singing this role (as, indeed, when he, or, rather, his protagonist Leopold Bloom, implicitly cast the Don as Blazes Boylan, Molly’s empty and boring lover). The two aristocratic ladies have a more difficult time with tenderness since, in an honor culture, outraged honor seems to demand steely revenge. Donna Anna even puts this honor culture in its best possible light in her splendid aria, “Or sai chi l’onore,” which makes the demand for bloodshed sound almost like a high-minded assertion of human dignity with no downside. By the opera’s end, however, Donna Anna sings a different tune, literally: the stately, flowing first half of her aria, “Non mi dir,” in which she expresses tenderness to Ottavio, and its vigorous second section, with its excited hope for a future of love with him. Both sections sound so unlike her earlier stern self that they puzzle many interpreters. (Peter Sellars even staged the aria with Donna Anna high on drugs, to explain the sudden shifts of mood.) Could one not say, however, that Anna, who knew how to be a lady, has now discovered how to be human? Donna Elvira is all along, in a sense, the opera’s emotional center, since it is through her distress and distraction that we see what this Don is worth and what his vaunted glory comes to. It is surely not very satisfactory, however, that the way in which she departs from the revenge mentality and embraces compassion (“pietà”) is through a renewed love for the Don! It would have been nicer, one feels, if she could have found a new love interest – but the plot does not provide one for her. Still, her emotional shift is the focus, and its unsatisfactory object is less important. “Mi tradì quell’alma ingrata” is another aria added at the Vienna premiere and so was not an original part of the score or libretto. But in this case the opera’s overall plan appears to require the addition: the plan is really not about the Don at all – it’s about the emotional journey of these three women, each wronged, each tempted by revenge, but each, in the end, overcome by love. And it’s also about how each, through that change, awakens to a life that is less exhausted (for revenge is very fatiguing), less strained, more capable of genuine delight and happiness. That, I believe, is Mozart’s plan. Or, rather, it’s what, being Mozart, he made of a libretto that was at best an incomplete fit with his insights and sensibilities. Don Giovanni remains a puzzle: but its searingly powerful music and its complex, often surprising emotions give listeners an unparalleled journey into the human heart. Martha C. Nussbaum, Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at The University of Chicago, has also taught at Harvard, Brown, and Oxford universities. Her latest books are The Monarchy of Fear: A Philosopher Looks at Our Political Crisis (2018) and The Cosmopolitan Tradition: A Noble But Flawed Ideal (2019). She is the winner of the 2016 Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy and the 2018 Berggruen Prize for Philosophy and Culture. Donna Elvira (Ana María Martínez) arrives in Seville, searching for Don Giovanni: Lyric production, 2014 | 15 season. Todd Rosenberg Masetto (Michael Sumuel) and his fiancée, Zerlina (Andriana Chuchman), making merry with their friends: Don Giovanni at Lyric, 2014 | 15 season. Todd Rosenberg Donna Anna (Marina Rebeka), desperate that justice be done after finding the body of her dead father, the Commendatore: Don Giovanni at Lyric, 2014 | 15 season. Todd Rosenberg