Casanova and Da Ponte: The Lives and Afterlives of "Don Giovanni"

Six Degrees of Plácido Domingo: Part 2

A heads-up that this article contains some frank descriptions of sexual abuse and incest. Please take care while reading.

Welcome to Part 2 of Six Degrees of Plácido Domingo, where we’ll be exploring opera’s current #MeToo reckoning through four centuries of misogyny and misconduct in the genre’s history — onstage and off. If you missed Part 1, check out The Medici: Sex, Power, and the Birth of Opera.

The fate of Don Giovanni is one thing. 

He’s at a dinner, his companion the statue commemorating the man he killed only a few hours earlier (the logic of how one can erect a full statue within hours of its subject’s death speaks to a larger discussion around the logic of all statues). It’s there that the rake is ordered by the Commendatore to repent for what Errol Flynn would have termed his wicked, wicked ways. The Don refuses and is promptly dragged to hell. Disappeared from the world he inhabited (one without any other hints of the supernatural), the rest of the characters resume their…