Synopsis

On today’s date in 1787, Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni had its premiere performance in Prague, with Mozart himself conducting. Mozart had arrived in Prague early in October that year, but as singers and instrumentalists alike needed more time than originally planned to prepare his difficult new score, the premiere occurred later than planned.

The October 29th premiere was a triumph, and a Prague newspaper reported that Mozart was received with threefold cheers when he entered and left the theater. At the request of Joseph II, the Austrian emperor, Don Giovanni was staged in Vienna the following year. The emperor was pleased: “That opera is divine,” he told Mozart’s librettist, Lorenzo da Ponte, but, surprisingly, the Viennese audiences didn’t seem to like it.

Da Ponte quoted the Emperor as suggesting Don Giovanni was just too complicated for their taste: “Such music is not meat for the teeth of my Viennese,” he said. In his memoirs, da Ponte wrote, “I reported this remark to Mozart, who replied quietly: ‘Well, give them time to chew on it, then.’”

”He was not mistaken,” continued da Ponte. “At each performance of Don Giovanni the applause increased, and little by little, even Vienna of the dull teeth came to savor it.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Wolfgang Mozart (1756-1791): Don Giovanni; Michele Pertusi (as Leporello); London Philharmonic; Georg Solti, conductor; London 455 500