giovanni is my blorbo

it's leporello's birthday this sunday (according to the gazzaniga don giovanni opera, which was what mozart took inspiration from, leporello was born on easter) and also an essay about leporello literally got me into the prestigious university program i'll be going to. i kinda owe him something, so i remade the ruler of everything leporello post with the full song.

yes, the meme is dead. no i don't care. happy birthday to a silly little servant who maybe isn't cared about by many but whom i care about very deeply.

sources for all the footage, in the order they first appear:

This production’s Don Giovanni and Leporello have physical interactions that are different from those of other productions that I’ve seen. The way they tease, comfort, and play with each other are rather… close at times.

Anyway.

Donna Elvira makes this fun face when she hears how many people Don Giovanni has slept with in Spain.

I’ve realized I love productions that do fun things with Leporello’s book of Don Giovanni’s conquests.

Finally, when Don Giovanni is dragged to hell, he clings desperately to Leporello. In doing this, he is both fighting to escape punishment for his crimes while also dragging his servant down with him.

And the latter even succeeds!

… But we need Leporello for the last song, so he comes back. And he does so in a way that makes it look like Hell just. rejects him.

mozart thee stallion

ANYWAY i’m thinking a lot about how they really are the two societal outsiders of the opera. first off there’s their interactions with their respective classes, it’s their attachment to the don that sort of singles them out (elvira does not entirely fit in with the nobles anna and ottavio due to her sullied reputation- see how the don kind of weaponizes this against her also- while leporello is distrusted by zerlina and masetto because of his employment with the don, which the don again seems to capitalize on when he keeps blaming leporello for things he’s done against those two). you can actually even see this in the general key placement of all the characters. the nobles tend to stick around the a-c keys for the most part while elvira is almost always at the e flat key separate from them, and while leporello does use the g major key associated with the peasants he dips into the lower keys much more often than them. elvira is also introduced on the e flat key and leporello on the f key and maybe this gets into like, #lunatic territory but i don’t think it’s coincidental they’re only a step away from one another. 

and then of course there’s the religious aspect, what with the don calling leporello an antisemitic slur (which i can’t stress enough would have been a deliberate choice on daponte’s end given daponte’s personal background) and the implications behind elvira fleeing burgos (like one of the most catholic cities in spain) and deliberately not going back there either at the end (remember she doesn’t go to a convent it’s a mistranslation LOL). i think this slots neatly into them having the hardest moral conflicts in the opera too because while nobody here is having a good time i think everyone else can rationalize their relationship to the don as a good vs evil thing where leporello and elvira . can’t really. even as much as elvira tries to

and THEN there’s the gender aspect also… elvira is engendered as more masculine than the other women. i think a lot about how anna goes to elvira for comfort and protection in the act 1 finale rather than ottavio that shit is crazy!!!!! elvira is also the one that is the actual leader of the very loose Band Of People The Don Has Fucked With (again in contrast to ottavio- the bit where he’s like “ok NOW we know that the don murdered the commendatore.” when everyone else has figured that out, anna has left the stage, and nobody else is paying attention to him is one of the funniest lines in the show imo) and she positions herself masculinely as sort of a defense against her own love for the don, ie the “i’m going to rip his heart out” thing. i joke a lot about anna being just a female verdi baritone that doesn’t know she’s in a mozart opera but i really do think in another life elvira would’ve been a tenor. then there’s leporello who i mean look at him but anyway besides the obvious fact he has the weird “bordering on nagging wife/mother in re: the don” thing there’s points in the music where his compositional qualities are much more in line with how mozart writes female characters (you can see it in the catalogue aria best) and he is also really submissive in that even when he’s the one setting the melody of a piece his lower voice makes him sort of sink below other characters. 

and then at the end they just kind of both have to resign themselves to being societal outsiders with only each other getting it. AUGHHHH

anyway all that in mind also mozart keeps pairing them up in various ways because i know he knows the compare and contrast between these two is crazy i may be posting like a goddamn lunatic rn but i’m just observing THAT guy so maybe take it up with him . or moliere maybe because as SOOON as that guy invented the concept of donna elvira he was like I gotta ideologically link her with that fuck ass servant

There's sections from the libretto on the website and it sounds, uhh, not promising, considering it's described as "[rejecting] the moralistic, condemnatory attitude towards Giovanni that we inherited from the 19th century, and which still pervades the majority of stage productions in regular opera houses today".

www.dgrocks.com/

oh i HAVE heard of this. we're so so doomed

like ignoring the 'maybe we shouldn't be 'against condemning' the character who's entire personality is Being A Sadistic Manipulative Rapist. the nineteenth century was largely where we GOT the 'don giovanni is a rebel' talk, because eta hoffmann at the very tail end of the 18th century always fucked things up for everyone.