preview

Don Giovanni Character Analysis

Good Essays
Don Giovanni is an operatic character that plays a womanizer during the 17th century. This was a play first performed in 1789, a successful creation of Mozart and DaPonte. During the play, Don Giovanni represents a sociopath that is lead by his incredible weakness for women. This weakness leads him into darkness, complete with seduction, and murder. Since the beginning, many people have seen Don Giovanni as a hero but many others have considered him a villain. The actions of Don Giovanni are not completely heroic neither are they totally villainous. But is noticeable that throughout the play he is more a hero than a villain.
In the first act, Don Giovanni is rushing out from Donna Anna’s room. She pursues him and calls for help to arrest the man she says raped her. When she is calling for help her father, the Commendatore, comes out and challenges Don Giovanni to a duel to revenge his daughter’s honor. Don Giovanni won the duel and now Donna Ana’s father is dead. This particular scene is controversial in the play because depicts Don Giovanni as a rapist and as a murder. But this is not clearly convincible. In the first place, the woman is chasing him after he leaves the room which is odd since no woman would chase the man that just raped her. Then the Commendatore was killed in a duel in which he was the challenger. A duel is the fighting between two persons to fix their differences and usually, this kind of battles was legal during the 17th century. Don Giovanni did not
Get Access