Don Juan stands alongside Faust and Don Quixote as one of the most significant figures in European cultural history: As seducer and rapist, lover and murderer in one, he became a fascinating myth, replicated a thousand times over in all forms of art and constantly reshaped. As the archetypal ladies' man, he fascinates young and old of both genders and is at once the ultimate, coveted dream and admired idol and also the unscrupulous egomaniac and gruesome demon. When Mozart and his librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte decided to tackle this familiar material, they were able to build on an already rich tradition. In the 1780s, a number of Don Juan operas had been created, which meant firstly that this subject matter was extremely popular with audiences, but it also offered opportunities for depicting this prominent figure in a new, more complex way. The dramatic composition of the opera was in itself extremely innovative, in so far as it had been conceived and executed as a comic opera and yet starts with a murder and ends with Don Giovanni's dramatic descent into Hell. In addition, the complex title figure in Mozart's and Da Ponte's version offers a wealth of interpretative possibilities. Although the opera was unable to repeat the triumph of the first performance in Prague on 29 October 1787 during Mozart's lifetime, today it is undisputedly one of the most important works in the repertoire.
