Don Juan Triumphant - The Musical

The Musical

In the musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber, Don Juan Triumphant figures prominently in the second act as an opera within a musical and is a thinly veiled adaptation of Mozart's Don Giovanni which premiered in Prague in 1787, only told from Don Juan's point of view. In this version, the Phantom forces the opera company to stage his work and orders Christine, a Swedish soprano and his protege with whom he is in love with, to be cast in the lead role. She reluctantly agrees to do so only after her fiance, Raoul, devises a plan to catch the Phantom during the opening night performance.

Only a small portion of the opera is seen onstage, in which Don Juan (played by leading tenor Ubaldo Piangi) and his servant, Passarino, make plans for Don Juan's seduction of the maiden Aminta (Christine). Passarino, dressed as Don Juan and hiding his face, is the one who made her acquaintance. According to the plan, he is to leave the house before Aminta arrives for a dinner with Don Juan, who has assumed Passarino's identity. Passarino, pretending to be Don Juan, will announce his return later, prompting Don Juan (pretending to be Passarino) to suggest that Aminta hide with him in a bedroom to avoid being found. As soon as Piangi slips into a hiding place to await the start of the scene, he is quietly strangled by the Phantom, who takes his place and sings "The Point of No Return" with Christine before declaring his love in front of the whole audience. The opera breaks up into chaos when she exposes his horribly deformed face and Piangi's body is found, leading to the finale of the musical ("Down Once More"/"Track Down This Murderer").

In the film adaptation of the musical, the audience at the opera house is seen recoiling in shock at the jarring discordance and staging of Don Juan Triumphant, which is very different from the traditional opera stagings they are use to.