Responding to Don Giovanni

Don Giovanni is a tragic person, his concluding condemnation and death a tragic outcome? I think so. After all, a tragic person is one who comes to a bad end because of some flaw in the person's character. The person, Don Giovanni in this instance, is unable to turn aside from the path to personal destruction, positive traits notwithstanding. Don Giovanni is fluent with words. He sings. He does so to lovely music. But he is mercurial, changing quickly from amiability to anger. He is arbitrary, he is tyrannical, he is insensitive (or just uncaring) to the consequences of his actions.

He suffers from an addiction, an addition to copulation. Whilst we remember him for his quick thinking, his music, his command, we leave the theatre remembering his total commitment to the seduction of women, any women. It is that addition which brings him down. He kills an old man, he tyrannises his servant, he casts aside those whom he has seduced. In the end, the combination of forces, including extra-terrestial ones, require him to repent or to be consumed by the flames.

Now as he has his last meal and is assailed by his enemies, he has to choose. And so do we. We have to choose between a regret that he refuse to repent and a sympathy for his resistance. Hurrah for the last-ditcher. And what of Don Giovanni himself. To what extent is a his choice a calm, considered one; to what extent is he driven to hell because of a realisation that a life of repentence will be a life without consummation and thus a life which will not be worth living. Hell on earh or life in a hell in the company of women who have fallen and who will thus be available to a satyr.



Think too about the scale of his predations. In Spain, 'one thousand and three', in Italy 640, in Germany 230, and in France and Turkey 290 - a total of of over 2100. Now of course we don't know how long he's been rapacious, afflicted. And we an remember that, in the castle amongst the wedding party, he alerts Leparello to the possibility, perhaps the likelihood, of ten - ten - additions to his list.

But there little in the way of self-awareness. The tragic hero realises the personal weakness and the conclusion to which it will lead. Don Giovanni exhibits no such awareness. His indifference to the feelings of others, be they women, servants, or old men, is total. Cursed by an addiction and by the means, material as well as physical, to feed the addiction, he follows the path to perdition. The direction, the invitation to repent, uttered in however sonorous a voice, must be meaningless. Such an addiction calls for expurgation by fire.