MOZART Don Giovanni

Marcio da Silva Stage/Music Director
Ensemble OrQuesta Opera Academy
HPO Ensemble​
Saturday 22nd March, 7pm
​​Christ Church, St Leonards-on-Sea

Tickets: £0* - £25  HPO Opera | Mozart, Don Giovanni at Christ Church St Leonards on Sea event tickets from TicketSource

Tickets (no booking fee) will also be available from The Bookkeeper, 1a Kings Rd, St Leonards, TN37 6EA and Barnaby's Lounge, 46 Robertson Street, Hastings TN34 1HL

​*Pay what you can tickets available to ALL online and on the door.

Don Giovanni Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
The great popularity in Prague of Mozart’s opera, Le Nozze di Figaro, led the theatre’s impresario to commission a new work from the composer. Mozart wanted to keep the same librettist, Lorenzo da Ponte. Da Ponte was busy writing for other composers at the Viennese court and decided to adapt an existing libretto about Don Juan – the notorious libertine of fiction – and his eventual descent into hell.

Mozart wrote at the time of the Enlightenment ferment. The premiere date of 1787 was eleven years after the American Revolution and two years before the French Revolution. Mozart had composed Figaro one year before, based on the Beaumarchais play that Napoleon famously called ‘the revolution in action.’ This had poked fun at the nobility and celebrated common folk. Some argue that it was because Figaro so angered Mozart's patrons in Vienna that he produced Don Giovanni in Prague, a town that held a reputation for encouraging the rebellious spirit. Indeed, the text of Don Giovanni originally included the refrain ‘Viva la Libertà’ (later changed to ‘Viva la Società’ at the request of the Italian authorities). The opera supports liberty and attacks the church, and celebrates life and the fullness of the human appetite.