Don Giovanni’s Reasons: Thoughts on a masterpiece

Felicity Baker is a Reader Emeritus in French, University College London, who has published and lectured internationally on eighteenth-century literature since the 1960s. Her main research areas are Lorenzo Da Ponte, Mozart’s librettist, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s philosophy of freedom and equality, his contractual thinking in the Late Enlightenment and its significance today. Magnus Tessing Schneider holds a PhD from Aarhus University, Denmark, and works as a researcher in theatre studies at Stockholm University. His research centres on the dramaturgy of Italian opera, including the operas of Monteverdi, Gluck, Mozart and Verdi.

• Da Ponte – Mozart – Don Giovanni – L’arbore di Diana – Librettos – Rousseau – Antisemitism – Venice – Joseph II – Martín y Soler – Autobiography – Jewish identity – Dante – Don Juan – Enlightenment – Libertinism – Duelling – Critical rewriting – Bizarre – 18th-century literature – Pity – Ruth Berghaus – Opera