Don Giovanni’s conductor Warren Puffer Jones sits down with Robby Griswold of the AOT Advisory Board and talks about the music, the characters, and the realism that leads many to call Giovanni Mozart’s most seminal work.

RG: Would you describe the opera from a musical standpoint: what can the audience expect to hear from his orchestrations and the voices? Do you have a favorite part?

WPJ: Many people consider Don Giovanni to be Mozart's operatic masterpiece and one of the best operas in the entire repertory. It is so full of wonderful music, and is so dramatically engaging, that it's hard to pick a favorite point. One aspect of Mozart's genius is his ability to flesh out the characters on stage with his music. In the first Act, Donna Elvira sings a furious, quick aria warning the young Zerlina about Don Giovanni's treachery. She is full of rage (and self-righteousness), and it comes through in the angularity of the music, the jagged melody line and the harsh dotted rhythms. After all, Elvira is a noble woman, so she can easily tell the peasant Zerlina what to do. But in the next scene, Elvira tries to convince Donna Anna, a social equal, of Giovanni's true stripes. Here Mozart gives her more noble music, sweeter and more refined.

RG: How is Mozart's music different from other favorite composers like Wagner or Verdi?

Mozart was writing in a time when there was still a clear distinction made between recitative sections (the minimally accompanied, almost speech-like passages that further the plot) and aria sections (the fully-sung, fully-accompanied expressions of thoughts and emotions). Verdi was already blurring the lines between the two by the mid 1800's, Wagner tossed aside any distinctions, so that by the end of the 19th century Puccini was writing operas where everything was like an aria, written in a very free style. In the 17th and 18th centuries, though, there was much more emphasis placed, by composers and librettists, on the structure of an opera: the focus was on expressing emotions, with bits of plot-advancing recitative thrown in just to get to the next emotion-expressing aria. The classic caricature of opera, where a character sings the same thing over and over (be it "I love you" or "I want revenge") comes from this kind of work, exemplified by Handel. Mozart inherited this style, but poured an amazing amount of ingenuity, creativity and spark into it. What results is an opera that, though still very structured, is always moving forward, almost cinematic in style.

Whereas Handel and his contemporaries focused on the solo aria (and, to be sure, Mozart wrote wonderfully expressive music for characters alone on stage, such as Donna Elvira's moving aria "Mi tradì" in the second act, where she tries to reconcile her feelings of anger and pity for Don Giovanni), Mozart excelled at the operatic ensemble in a way that very few composers have ever been able to match. Take, for example, the sextet in the second act: the music begins with just two characters on stage, Leporello (disguised as Giovanni) and Donna Elvira. This opening music captures the different feelings of the characters, Leporello's desire to escape, and Elvira's attempt to keep her lover close. Next, Don Ottavio and Donna Anna enter, unbeknownst to the two already onstage, with music that expresses their different feelings, Ottavio trying to comfort his beloved and Anna wanting revenge. Soon all four are singing at the same time, though with different thoughts and emotions, and all fitting into one tempo and one piece of music. As if this weren't enough, Zerlina and Masetto soon appear, surprising the other four, again to their own music. And just when this is about to become too much to handle, Leporello drops his disguise, and all of the characters express their astonishment. Thus Mozart is able to keep the plot moving forward while still expressing the emotions and inner thoughts of his characters.

RG: What do you think the opera Don Giovanni is trying to express? What is its message?

At the end of the opera, after Giovanni is dragged down to hell, the remaining characters turn to each other, and to the audience, and give the "moral" to the story: if you're a bad person in your life, you'll get what you deserve. This, however, doesn't seem to capture the whole of the opera (and it's interesting to note that for much of the 19th century this final moral was left out). Mozart himself gave the opera the subtitle of "dramma giocoso," or, essentially, a comedy. As a genre, the work is an opera buffa, a style which grew out of the comedies featuring bumbling servants of the 18th century in contrast with the opera seria, or noble, serious dramas. Much has been written over the years about this distinction, and whether Giovanni is really buffa or seria (in very few comedies, at least until modern times, would a character be dragged down to hell, in wrenching detail). In the end, though, I think it's important to take Mozart at his word. This piece is essentially a comedy and not a tragedy. The work is so effective because throughout, happy or sad, light or dark, it is entirely captivating and entertaining.

RG: How do you feel about Giovanni the character? Is he a good or bad guy?

Being a person of noble birth, Don Giovanni would have been expected by 18th-century audiences to be a character of virtue. At the very opening of the opera, though, we see him attempt (and possibly succeed) to seduce (or possibly rape) Donna Anna and then kill her father. His womanizing (or at least his attempts) continue throughout the opera until the statue from grave of the slain Commander returns to drag him down to hell. One of the many things that makes the opera Don Giovanni exciting to work with, though, is that all the characters aren't necessarily as pure or well-intentioned as they may seem at first. Masetto is prone to bouts of jealous rage, Zerlina abandons her fiancé on the day of their wedding, Donna Anna may not have resisted Giovanni's advances as much as she later professes, Leporello claims high morals but will do anything for money, and the list goes on. These are characters who defy the high- or low-class generalizations of the 18th century, but are instead complex, many-layered personalities. Don Giovanni is not what anyone would call an upstanding citizen (though, despite the list of conquests Leporello relates, Giovanni never has any actual success with his female targets during the opera). But perhaps what does him in in the end is that he is so open about his misdeeds, that he has no qualms about them.

RG: Would you describe your role as a conductor? What idiosyncratic duties are left to the conductor and the conductor alone that the audience may not realize?

Everyone involved with the opera has a hand in shaping the production: certainly the stage director, and of course the singers, as well as the costume, set and lighting designers. All these different personalities, with different ideas, different strengths, bring all their energy and passion to the production, which is what makes working in opera so exciting. But Don Giovanni is what it is (and we remember and come back to it again and again) because of Mozart and his music. And it is the conductor's peculiar duty to work with all of these artists to realize what it is Mozart wrote on the page. You can have beautiful sets and costumes, wonderful singers and great staging, but if the conductor doesn't let all these people shine through Mozart's music, the production won't work. It's that in-the-moment shaping of music and drama that is the true art of conducting.

RG: What is particularly exciting about AOT’s upcoming production of Giovanni?

We have assembled a marvelous group of singers for this production. Those familiar with Arbor Opera Theater will recognize some of the best singers from this part of the state, singers who have worked with us in the past and who will keep coming back. But we've also found really exciting talent from across the country. The singers who perform with AOT now will be in the major opera houses of the country before we know it.

RG: Now that you may have an answer to my earlier question: What is your favorite moment of the opera?

The Act II finale, the end of the opera. Mozart writes some of his most gripping music for the entrance of the statue of the Commander (the beginning of the end for Giovanni) and the tension only gets ratcheted up. Even if you know what's going to happen, it's impossible not to be pulled to the edge of your seat. But as soon as he disappears, the other characters burst on, and just like that we're back in the world of opera buffa. They sing a brilliantly quick fugue as they tell us all the moral of the story, and the curtain falls. In a short time we've run the gamut from high drama to high comedy, all with exhilarating music.

RG: Which is your favorite character?

Well, they're all great, and I probably go back and forth, but I think Leporello is my favorite. As soon as he is out of earshot he is complaining about Don Giovanni, saying he wants to leave, but he easily plied with a little bit of money, and genuinely seems proud of his boss's conquests. He's a great source of humor in the opera.

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