Day 13 8/14: Don Giovanni!

Today’s class lecture and readings were very interesting because they focused on how different ideologies, mind-frames, and social settings can generate trends in history. All of these things, I think, are the most valuable part of the dedication to a historical discipline because an understanding of the intersection of all these factors can be a very useful predictive tool in the current age. In the 18th century, the Enlightenment was becoming part of the cultural awareness against oppressive regimes, and the ideas it espoused (freedom of thought, freedom of religion, etc.) often ran in contention with the government at the time. Voltaire (1694-1778), an Enlightenment luminary and philosopher, wrote many volumes that rejected the Catholic dogma and insisted on the institution of personal autonomy. His works, along with those of Montesquieu, Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, heavily influenced the French and American Revolutions. According to Parsons, the writings of authors/thinkers such as these served as a tool that armed the populace with knowledge in order to hedge against oppressive regimes. Kathy made the analogy to the uses of Twitter today. Twitter, for those who may not know or care, is a website where people can upload a sentence or two about what they are doing (called a ‘status’). Although it may seem inconsequential, it has actually proven very useful. In the most recent riot and protests to the Iranian ‘re-election’ of president Ahmadinejad, the Iranian government was cracking down on the protesters by jailing them, harassing them, and worse. The whole world was able to learn exactly what was going on because the protestors used Twitter to update the world about what was being done to them and by whom. In this manner information can now be seamlessly uploaded to the web for the whole world to see, making the individual a viable threat to governments that demand secrecy and discretion in order to carry out oppressive actions. In the 18th century, people used the writings of Enlightenment thinkers to actively question what was going on around them. This resulted in what we know today as a ‘Civil Society,’ the existence of private pockets of people who get together to talk about ideas. My own personal pocket would be my involvement in the Speech and Debate team at UCD. The whole activity is centered on gathering t engage in academic and political discourse. I suppose that I have Enlightenment writers like Voltaire to thank for such activities!
Some rulers attempted to include Enlightenment ideals into their policies, but they never added everything that the movement taught. In Austrian history, Maria Theresia is good example of a ruler who had both Enlightenment policies and repressive policies. She was born in 1717 and was raised a pious Catholic. Her father Charles VI, anticipating the empire’s distaste for a female ruler and having no male heirs, made the different territories under his control sign the Pragmatic Sanction which was a document stating that all of the signatories would abide the ruler of a female. However, according to Beller by 1740 Prussia, France, Bavaria, and Saxony all rejected the Pragmatic Sanction which leads to the War of Austrian Secession (1740-1748). Maria Theresia fought with the leader of the Secessionist faction, Friedrich II, for control of her birth-right. Although she was militarily successful, she lost Silesia to Friedrich II at the end of the war. Some of her initiatives that fall in line with the ideals espoused in the Enlightenment include compulsory public education, restrictions on judicial torture, and smallpox inoculations. Although these actions are laudable from an Enlightenment view because they benefit the people and allow them to better themselves, Maria Theresia did not follow some critical portions of the ideology. She was incredibly anti-Semitic, going so far as to expel the Bohemian Jews. By the 18th century, religious toleration had become a core tenant of Enlightenment thinking. The world still had a long way to go then, just as we do now. To a large degree, we are still struggling with the same issues as Europeans were then: citizens need to be informed and educated so that governments cannot exercise such coercive power over us. If the Iranian protesters found a way to make their voices heard, I am confident that we can improve.
For a brief period, Austria did experience a ruler who was very involved with Enlightenment policies: Maria Theresia’s son Joseph II (see day 9). He introduced the Patent of Tolerance in 1781 which gave a larger degree of religious tolerance to the Jews. He also abolishes the death penalty, a punishment that most other westernized countries have since achieved as well. Unfortunately for him and for many Austrians, many of his reforms were reversed when he died.
Of course, the last topic of the lecture was Mozart. Since this was the day that we were going to see Don Giovanni, we needed some information and background on the composer. He was born in 1756 in Salzburg, another famous city in Austria that gained international recognition when the film “The Sound of Music” was filmed there. He was one of seven children, originally given the name Wolfgang Gottlieb (meaning love of God) Mozart. From an early age he was identified as a child prodigy because of his skill and talent at music. In one instance when he was done playing a concert for Maria Theresia he jumped into her lap. In 1781 he arrived in Vienna to pursue music professionally, although he only received minor posts at first. He would eventually gain international fame and recognition and write numerous pieces and operas. It is generally thought that his three most famous operas are “The Magic Flute,” “Marriage of Figaro,” and “Don Giovanni,” which is the opera that we were gearing up to go see!
One nap and a shower later, I found myself outside of the Theater an der Wien, the opera house in which we were going to watch the performance, with a glass of champagne in hand and taking pictures with all of my friends dressed up and giggling. It was quite the fun time to hang out with people I liked, all looking sharp, waiting for an amazing cultural experience. I mean, I was going to see one of the most famous operas in the world in the city that it was written in! It doesn’t get much better than that if you ask me. This was going to be my first opera experience, so I was more than looking forward to what lay beyond the doors. At 1900 hours (7 pm), the doors opened and we were let in to see Don Giovanni.
First, brief description of the plot behind the opera: Don Giovanni is a frequent womanizer who uses and abuses his servant man, Leporello. On one fateful night he kills the father of a Donna Anna, a woman that he is trying to sleep with. This murder haunts Don Giovanni for the rest of the opera, as the friends and family of the slain father plot to exact vengeance upon Don Giovanni and the father promises before he dies to come back in the form of a statue. The Don, not to be done is by some woman’s family and a ghost, plots to have a masquerade in which Leporello will dress as a decoy Don Giovanni so that he will take the hit for the murder. At the party, Don Giovanni praises wine and women as “the essence of mankind.” After screams are heard outside of the mansion, Leporello discovers that the statue has indeed come back to find the Don. Don Giovanni himself opens the door to be greeted by the statue of the slain man who asks him if he will repent for his sins. Don Giovanni adamantly refuses, which prompts the statue to drag him down below the earth where he is engulfed in the fires of hell. The statue concludes the opera, “Such is the end of the evildoer: the death of a sinner always reflects his life.”
This particular company’s interpretation of the play was welcome because it did not reproduce the scene as it would have been played out at the time of its penning, rather they chose to make it more contemporary and feature most of the scenes in a hotel. Although some may not like this adaptation, I found that it was much easier to follow and also more stimulating to see the differences between the original manuscript and the performance. For example, the play showed many women in scant dress who followed Don Giovanni around. This display would never have been accepted in the 18th century, but I enjoyed it. And not just because I happen to be a 19 year-old guy, I thought that it made the Don seem much the way that Mozart would wanted him to be (and plus, the girls were pretty cute too). The most obvious use of artistic license was the ending scene. In the original manuscript all of the events of the play take place in one night, but the ending scene that we saw featured Don Giovanni and Leporello as old men when the ghost finally comes knocking. None of us were entirely sure as to why this was so, but the best guess that we have is that it was meant to show how the Don was tormented over time by the looming threat of death and that aged him.
After the play was over, I headed back to Simmering with some of my friends to grab some dinner and call it a night. It was fun going from being sweaty and exhausted on my Alpine hike only 24 hours before we were all dressed up attending a world-famous opera. What a trip!
Today’s blog was brought to you by the German phrase ‘die dir,’ which means ‘at your place.’