Life of Mozart

—l82" DON GIOVANNI."while Don Giovanni, alarmed, seeks by deception to keepthem in uncertainty, and to silence Elvira. All this givesrise to a genuinely musical variety of mood tinged withmelancholy by the grief of Donna Anna and Don Ottavio.A most prominent feature of the whole is the skilful grouping.Donna Anna and Don Ottavio are inseparable, andform the nucleus of the piece ; Elvira and Don Giovanni,though in opposition, are sometimes together, and sometimesin conjunction with the other two. The situation demandsthat Elvira shall be most frequently isolated, in contrastwith the three remaining characters ; and as her passionateexcitement keeps her in the foreground, she gives the tone tothe whole piece, and Don Giovanni is constrained to followher, while Don Ottavio and Donna Anna only occasionallyemerge from their mood of anxious contemplation. A touchof dramatic truth is the adoption by the orchestra and othervoices of Elvira's motif to the wordsi^^pe^gTe vuol tra - dir an - cor,so that it seems to be the key to the riddle forcing itself onthe ear and betraying Don Giovanni's guilt. The motifrecurs after all the reproaches, questions, and appeals,and dies away in gentle but pained reproach when thetrue position of affairs is left unexplained. The suspicionwhich here enters the mind of Donna Anna prepares theway for the conviction which forces itself upon her thatDon Giovanni is the murderer of her father. The groupingof the voices is treated primarily as a means of psychologicalcharacterisation. The entrance of Elvira in the second finalegives Leporello a moral shock which brings him musicallyen rapport with Elvira, and their parts are therefore incorrespondence ; indeed, towards the end the}^ are in closeimitation-'-^'' and opposed to that of Don Giovanni. In the157 The distinguishing form of imitation appears to be always justifiedpsychologically by its appropriateness to the particular character; in thequartet, for instance, Donna Anna and Don Ottavio have the imitation ; inthe first finale it is given to Zerlina and Masetto.