Don Giovanni lives on in Mozart’s wind octet

Before Hugh Hefner, Porfirio Rubirosa, Errol Flynn and other famous 20th-century seducers, there was the ultimate libertine, Don Juan (or in Italian, Don Giovanni). 

Most sources trace the legend of Don Juan to Spanish author Tirso de Molina (1583-1648), who in 1630 wrote El Burlador de Sevilla y Convidado de Piedra (The Trickster of Seville and the Stone Guest). The play in turn inspired similarly themed works, including Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni (1787), with a libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte. “The opera is full of the most original characterizations and instrumental color,” writes musicologist J. David Jackson. “Its ingenious dramaturgy, misunderstood in the 19th century, lays bare the human heart and the shocking workings of the human psyche.”

CSO Sessions Episode 24, premiering Dec. 1, features Selections from Don Giovanni, K. 527, for Wind Octet. In his introductory remarks, CSO bassoon Dennis Michel describes the octet as "the greatest hits from Don Giovanni." The arrangement is attributed to Josef Triebensee (1772-1846), who in 1791 played oboe in the world premiere of Mozart’s The Magic Flute. Triebensee went on to become a conductor and composer (including 12 operas in German and Czech). In Prague, he eventually succeeded Carl Maria von Weber as chief conductor at the Estates Theater, which became his professional home for 22 years.

As the opera begins, Don Giovanni and his servant Leporello are confronted by the Commendatore, the father of Donna Anna, one of the Don’s many conquests. Each party hurls insults at the other, and the confrontation escalates to murder. As the Commendatore dies, he curses the Don and vows retribution.

Triebensee’s suite consists of Leporello’s two comic showcases from Act 1, “Notte e giorno faticar,” and the Catalog aria, in which he enumerates his master’s thousands of conquests, and Donna Elvira’s “Ah, chi mi dice mai” and “Metà di voi quà vadano” from Act 2 (in which Giovanni, disguised as Leporello, takes on several men sent to dispatch him).

The suite is an example of harmoniemusik. During the 18th century, rich patrons would engage an ensemble of wind instruments — usually oboes, bassoons and horns — for regular performances. Works originally written for full orchestra would be arranged for these smaller harmonie bands. In his introduction to CSO Sessions Episode 24, Michel points out that Mozart himself showcases a harmonie ensemble during the scene in which Don Giovanni awaits the arrival of the dead Commendatore, now taking the form of a statue (aka the Stone Guest).

In the opera, the ensemble performs excerpts from Una cosa rara by Vicente Martín y Soler, I due litiganti by Giuseppe Sarti and the aria “Non più andrai” from Mozart’s own Le nozze di Figaro. In arranging his Don Giovanni octet, “Triebensee had a model to follow,” Michel notes. "So that music, I think ironically is not included in this set of octet music from Don Giovanni, because it would immediately compare the arranger to Mozart himself. And that’s never going to be a favorable arrangement."