Feminist Readings of Mozart’s Don Giovanni*

by Amy Hill Schaffer ‘09

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Lorenzo Da Ponte’s opera Don Giovanni is usually viewed from a male perspective and thus as more humorous – perhaps even tongue-in-cheek – than serious. The plight of the women that Don Giovanni deceives is all for laughs, and the women are held responsible for Don Giovanni’s assaults.

Numerous opera critics and directors, even in recent years, have suggested that Donna Anna is somehow complicit in Giovanni’s attempted rape and subsequent murder of her father; she wanted him, she invented the story of an attempted rape because she was ashamed to admit that she was really in love with Giovanni, and so forth.

In The Operas of Mozart William Mann writes that “[Donna Anna's] censorious anger against others is a juvenile trait… and it would be beneficial to her personal growing-up if she had been pleasantly raped by Don [Giovanni].”² In a recent production in Salzburg, directed by Claus Guth, it is implied that Donna Anna was having a consensual affair with Giovanni. With these interpretations, Donna Anna’s perspective and experience is ignored. A sexual assault victim is silenced for the sake of comedy.

Don Giovanni is not held responsible for seducing Donna Elvira and Zerlina through lies and deceit; rather, the women are held responsible for not knowing better, and Donna Elvira especially for continuing to show sympathy, an understandable and human characteristic that Giovanni lacks.

Much critical attention is focused on the duet “La ci darem la mano,” in which Zerlina gives into Don Giovanni based on his promises to marry her and make her a lady, but little note is taken of the incident only a few scenes later where he attempts to rape her. In “The Abduction of Opera,” an article bemoaning the awful interpretations of modern opera directors, Heather Mac Donald writes that “[in] a contemporary setting where a mandate of premarital chastity is unthinkable… Zerlina’s cries of desperation when Don Giovanni hustles her off for a conquest become absurd.”³

But even in a more traditional interpretation of the opera, the idea that “unchaste” women cannot be raped reigns supreme. It would be difficult, otherwise, to reconcile the rapist with the romantic hero that Giovanni is made out to be. Because Zerlina is more flirtatious than the other women, because she has given in to Giovanni before, because she is of a lower social class than the other women, clearly she cannot be raped and therefore Don Giovanni’s actions are hardly worth consideration.

If only we could set aside the prevalent viewpoint of Don Giovanni as a hero, a viewpoint which ignores or discounts the experiences of the opera’s women, and focus instead on his victims, we would have an entirely different picture of the opera. This new picture is one which empowers women and helps them find comfort when they have been sexually victimized.

The opera features three strong female characters. Donna Anna is passionate about finding justice for her assault and her father’s murder. Donna Elvira does not let any threat to her reputation stop her from denouncing Giovanni’s evil deeds, and does her best to help the women who might be harmed by him. Zerlina tries to make the best of her life as a peasant, believes Donna Elvira’s warnings and attempts to fight off Don Giovanni, and, in a rarely performed duet, seeks violent revenge by threatening to kill Leporello. These are not weak characters; their ineffectuality is merely a symptom of the undeserved power which a male-dominated society offers a criminal like Don Giovanni.

The way the women band together against Giovanni provides a comforting picture for women in similar situations; so does the way that Zerlina immediately believes Donna Elvira’s warnings, and Don Ottavio provides loving support for his fiance instead of doubting her story. In the end we finally see justice done: although it was impossible for the living characters, still manipulated by Giovanni, to carry out their revenge, the dead Commendatore was able to act in their stead. The Don’s refusal to repent is not heroic, but it is realistic. It helps provide a reassurance that even though men who harm women may not be punished in this life, they will be in the next. God does not forgive those who do not believe that they need forgiveness.

For a staging that takes the women’s stories at face value instead of presenting them as a laughingstock and Giovanni as a romantic hero, try the 1995 Glyndebourne Festival Opera production directed by Deborah Warner. By keeping the opera’s problems in mind and focusing on the female characters, we can develop new perspectives on Don Giovanni and new appreciation for the way Mozart and Da Ponte told their stories.

Tags: Amy Hill Schaffer, Feminism, Mozart, music