Tre opere su Don Giovanni per Praga

Tre opere is a collection of essays discussing three Don Giovanni operas written in the 18th century and premiered in Prague; the collection is the fourth volume of the edition “Italian Opera of the 18th century in the Czech Lands”. The first essay of the collection is an essay by Tomislav Volek entitled “The Journey of Don Giovanni through Centuries”; the author compares the most important stagings of the amorous aristocrat ranging from the oldest interpretation by Tirso de Molina to later interpretations by authors like Da Ponte or Mozart. Luciano Paesani’s (Chieti-Pescara) summarises the current state of knowledge of the changes in the libretto of Righini’s opera Il convitato di pietra composed in 1776 for Prague and later introduced in Vienna and in Esterháze. Milada Jonášová explores newly discovered Prague partitures of Don Giovanni and describes various minute adjustments which Mozart introduced into the material during his preparation of the opera before its Prague premiere and later did not copy into his official partiture; these changes have, however, been preserved in the Prague partitures and later found their way into the copies which were circulated in Prague and around Europe. Manfred Hermann Schmid’s (Augsburg) contribution analyses the specific characteristics of duets in Mozart’s operas. Yet another essay by Milada Jonášová analyses Bedřich Smetana’s newly discovered letter to Johann Bernhard Gugler from 21st August 1868 in which Smetana talks about the remains of the original provisional partitures from the 1787 premiere of Don Giovanni. Jürgen Maehder (Salcburk) discusses an in the Central-European context lesser known opera “Il dissoluto punito ossia Don Giovanni Tenorio” by Ramón Carnicer (Barcelona 1822) and compares it with Mozart’s Don Giovanni which Carnicer follows up on. The collection further includes a key chapter of Rudolf Jedlička’s (1920 – 1989) dissertation thesis which discusses the peculiarities of the ensemble of Mozart’s Don Giovanni; the text is for the first time available in a German translation by Tomislav Volke. The appendix contains selected archival materials about Rudolf Jedlička, an outstanding interpreter of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, who performed this role for important European theatre houses including Staatsoper Berlin.