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Producer(s):
ARTE FRANCE, LITTLE BIG STORY
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Territories:
Worldwide.
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Production year:
2020
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Language(s):
German, English, French
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Rights:
TV, DVD, NON-THEATRICAL, INTERNET, VOD
Mozart himself said about his Don Giovanni: this work is divine, it is perhaps even more beautiful than "The Marriage of Figaro". When he was commissioned by the director of the Prague theater in January 1787, he had eight months left to create one of the most powerful operas in the repertoire.
According to his wife Constance, Mozart must rejoin Prague in September for stage setting, before completion of the writing: the Overture will be written on site, 48 hours before the premiere... It takes place the 28th of October 1787, in front of a stunned audience: Emperor Joseph II calls for Mozart in Vienna to play his new opera. But new cuts and arias were requested so that Mozart was in a rush again. April 1788: Mozart's last note is penned.
After his death in 1800, his publisher bought the manuscript of the work from Constance, then bequeathed it to his children. But when the son-in-law, Johann Baptist Streicher, decided to sell it in 1854, he could not find a buyer in all of Europe! A pianist of his acquaintance, Ernst Pauer, will find him a taker: the great French singer Pauline Viardot, who is one of his friends. She even sells her jewelry to pay the requested £ 150, a fortune at the time.
In 1902, the diva donated it to the Conservatoire national de Paris, and since 1964, it has been kept in the Music Department of the Bibiliothèque Nationale de France.