Don Giovanni, K.527

Since these performances list only orchestra and soloists, what audiences will hear in concert is almost certainly the overture, Mozart's introduction to the opera rather than the full staged work.

The overture opens with slow, ominous chords in D minor, music Mozart later reuses for the opera's final scene when a stone statue comes to drag the unrepentant Don Giovanni down to hell. This slow introduction is hushed and unsettling, built on stark unison passages and sudden loud chords that seem to freeze the hall.

Without pause, the music shifts to a fast, bright D major section that has nothing to do with statues or damnation, instead capturing the Don's restless energy and charm. Listen for scurrying string figures that seem to be running from something, and for the woodwinds tossing short, playful phrases back and forth.

Mozart wrote the overture so its final bars lead directly into the opera's opening scene, so a concert performance either invents its own ending or stops just short of that seam. Either way, the two contrasting ideas, doom and daring, are the whole story in miniature: a comedy that keeps glancing over its shoulder at something much darker.

Mozart composed Don Giovanni in 1787 on a libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte, based on the legend of Don Juan. It premiered in Prague on October 29, 1787, where Mozart had already had great success with The Marriage of Figaro. Prague audiences took to it immediately, and Mozart led a Vienna production the following year with some revisions. Legend holds that Mozart wrote the overture the night before the premiere, finishing it so close to curtain that the ink was barely dry, though the exact circumstances are not fully documented. The opera itself, subtitled a "dramma giocoso" mixing comedy and tragedy, has remained a repertory staple ever since, and its overture is frequently extracted for concert performance, giving listeners a compressed taste of the opera's collision of playfulness and dread.