Don Giovanni’s Reasons: Thoughts on a masterpiece von Felicity Baker | ISBN 9783631817964

Don Giovanni’s Reasons: Thoughts on a masterpiece

von Felicity Baker und Magnus Tessing Schneider
Mitwirkende
Autor / AutorinFelicity Baker
Autor / AutorinMagnus Tessing Schneider
Buchcover Don Giovanni’s Reasons: Thoughts on a masterpiece | Felicity Baker | EAN 9783631817964 | ISBN 3-631-81796-7 | ISBN 978-3-631-81796-4

Don Giovanni’s Reasons: Thoughts on a masterpiece

von Felicity Baker und Magnus Tessing Schneider
Mitwirkende
Autor / AutorinFelicity Baker
Autor / AutorinMagnus Tessing Schneider

Although Mozart’s Don Giovanni (1787) is the most analysed of all operas, Lorenzo Da Ponte’s libretto has rarely been studied as a work of poetry in its own right. The author argues that the libretto, rather than perpetuating the conservative religious morality implicit in the story of Don Juan, subjects our culture’s myth of human sexuality to a critical rewriting. Combining poetic close reading with approaches drawn from linguistics, psychoanalysis, anthropology, political theory, legal history, intellectual history, literary history, art history and theatrical performance analysis, she studies the Don Giovanni libretto as a radical political text of the Late Enlightenment, which has lost none of its ability to provoke. The questions it raises concerning the nature of compassion, seduction and violence, and the autonomy and responsibility of the individual, are still highly relevant for us today.