Madamina - Structure and Previous Versions

Structure and Previous Versions

The aria's two halves reverse the usual order of cavatina followed by cabaletta: in the first, a quick Allegro in 4/4, Leporello has a patter summarizing the number and occupations of Don Giovanni's lovers, while in the second, an Andante con moto in 3/4 (with a melody similar to that of the Larghetto of Mozart's earlier Quintet for Piano and Winds), he describes his approaches and preferences, while Donna Elvira presumably listens in horror.

A corresponding scene in which Don Giovanni's servant expounds the catalogue of his master's lovers was already present in several versions of Don Juan's story, in opera, theatre and Commedia dell'arte: probably the initiator was a version of Il convitato di pietra (The Stone Guest) attributed to Andrea Cicognini. The most immediate forerunner (premiering in 1787, a few months before Mozart's Don Giovanni) was the opera Don Giovanni, o sia Il convitato di pietra composed by Giuseppe Gazzaniga to a libretto by Giovanni Bertati. In Gazzaniga's opera, the aria in which Don Giovanni's servant, Pasquariello, describes his master's catalogue of lovers to Donna Elvira begins:

Original Italian English translation

Dell'Italia, ed Alemagna
ve ne ho scritte cento, e tante.
Della Francia, e della Spagna
ve ne sono non so quante:
fra madame, cittadine,
artigiane, contadine,
cameriere, cuoche, e sguattere;
perché basta che sian femmine
per doverle amoreggiar.

From Italy and Germany
here are written one hundred and more.
From France and from Spain
there are more than I know:
be they ladies, city women,
artisans, peasants,
waitresses, cooks and scullery maids,
it suffices they be female
for him to have to make love to them.

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