Directed by Carlos Saura
Giacomo Casanova made his mark on history for his numerous sexual conquests and was supposedly the inspiration for the 1787 opera Don Giovanni, with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. The opera blends comedy, melodrama and supernatural elements and Carlos Saura’s film uses these same highly theatrical elements to construct Lorenzo Da Ponte’s involvement in the creation of the opera. He starts in Venice in 1754 when a young Jewish boy is forced to change his name and be baptised. Lorenzo da Ponte (Lorenzo Balducci) grows up to become a priest but he writes texts attacking the Church and the power of the Inquisition and opens a brothel with his (married) mistress.
When Da Ponte is banished from Venice for 15 years he seeks refuge in Vienna, a much more open-minded city, where the maestro Salieri and the Emperor Joseph II ask him to write the libretto for Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro. The years pass and Da Ponte again works with Mozart (Lino Guanciale) while a now degenerate Casanova (Tobias Moretti) lingers in the background and Da Ponte falls in love with the virtuous Annetta (Emilia Verginelli). The character Don Giovanni changes: he is no longer like Casanova, a libertine in love with freedom and passion, but much more like Lorenzo, a man who after a life of depravity, finds his true love and marries her.
Art begins to imitate life as the opera progresses but Mozart’s health worsens following his father’s death and Annetta finds out about Da Ponte’s previous conquests. As the film progresses, the opera takes over the drama and the drama becomes so theatrical it sometimes becomes difficult to separate the intermingling stories. An entertaining romp, with musical instruments used being close to the ones that were used for the original performance.
Lezly Herbert
