Don Giovanni

Siping Qu Professor Harold Brent ENG 2850 28 November 2016 Don Giovanni and European Enlightenment European Enlightenment is a movement of 17th and 18th centuries that be taken to break the traditional thought and goals of the celebration of reason. It against religions ignorance and privilege; support freedom and equity. Before the European Enlightenment period, people were believing in God, the society was around by religion culture. Since the European Enlightenment started, it helped people turned

Mozart composed three Italian opera buffa- Le Nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Cosi fan tutte- with Lorenzo Da Ponte’s libretto. In the eighteenth century, the advent of Enlightenment in Europe changed the hierarchical social structure in European society. It brought great change to the women’s lifestyle by allowing noblewomen to have equal power to men and to voice themselves. Also, peasant women changed their lifestyle by being treated more equally as men who were at the same social level. Mozart

The music in Amadeus has been beyond the simple role as a background of the movie and greatly influenced the flow of the narrative in the film. The movie Amadeus arouses realism and immersion in the life of Mozart which is glorious but miserable at the same time by appropriately arranging the narrative of the film with Mozart’s great music. In other words, the soundtrack of the film composed by Mozart works as the important dramatic device to describe Mozart’s life, the main theme of the movie –

The Genius of Mozart "O, Mozart! Immortal Mozart!”- wrote Schubert in his diary (qtd. in Booth 93). He roused my admiration when I was young; he caused me to despair when I reached maturity; he is now the comfort of my old age- said Gioachino Rossini (qtd. in Archer). Mozart is sweet sunshine- said Dvorak during a lecture he gave at the Prague Conservatory (qtd. in Jacobson 164). These are just a few artists who admired this musical genius. Mozart’s music transcends the boundaries of time. Over 226

I watched Don Giovanni performed at Opernhaus Zurich. The thing that intrigued me the most was how the performers communicated the setting and actions of the program while being confined to a relatively small stage. The performance functioned similar to a High School play except for the fact that the music was continuous. In other performances I’ve seen, the scenes alternate between speaking parts with and without musical accompaniment. This opera, however, had no spoken parts whatsoever; everything

was written by Lorenzo da Ponte, who was also the librettist for Don Giovanni and La nozze de Figaro, two other renowned operas of Mozart’s.1 This opera was first performed in Vienna at the Burgtheater, on January 26th, 1790.2 Though the exact origin of the story Ponte based his libretto on is unclear, many people at the time believed that the story was based on a scandal in Emperor Joseph II’s court, where two Viennese officers were

calling him lazy and unappreciative. I was much more fond of the symphony music played by Mozart, although there was not much featured in the movie. I am not a big fan of Opera’s to begin with, so I am a little biased when judging them. I found Don Giovanni and the Opera written alongside Salieri more preferential; there was more substance and feeling in those. The opera Figaro to be extremely boring; apparently so did Joseph II. It was extremely slow with the same dark melody the whole piece. I

Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart Lydia Molina Mr. Dresser General Music 27 May, 2015 Mozart Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, known for his string of operas, concertos, symphonies and sonatas, he helped shape classical music as it is today. “Born on January 27, 1756, in Salzburg, Austria, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a musician capable of playing many instruments at age six. Over the years, Mozart aligned himself with a variety of European

Though extremely different in many ways, Amadeus was successfully translated from stage to film not as an adaptation but a parallel work. Peter Shaffer’s stage version is highly theatrical and unfortunately does not literally translate well to film, for multiple reasons. Shaffer and Milos Forman adapted Amadeus in a way that appealed to cinema audiences through cutting characters, expanding upon characters, altering language and narration, set and costume design, plot changes and taking full advantage

As a composer, and a performer, there can be no question of Mozart's genius, however, what is genius defined as? The main definition is that genius is a very great and rare innate ability or skill- it is a creative power. It is therefore clear that Mozart was in fact a genius in his music; it does no state anywhere, however, that a genius also has to have a divine personality and behaviour and this is clear as Mozart is shown in Amadeus as a silly, scatological, childish and "infantile" man. To be