All three sections (music, theatre and cinema) of the 20th edition of the Rovereto International Mozart Festival are inspired by a single unifying theme: the character and adventures of Don Giovanni.

The origins of the legend of Don Giovanni, set to music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart with libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte, go much further back than the period to which the two illustrious authors belonged. The earliest significant traces of a treatment of the subject go back to 1630, when, at the height of the Counter-Reformation, the Spanish dramatist Tirso de Molina wrote "El Burlador de Sevilla y Convidado de piedra", a drama whose moralistic and educational purpose was to condemn without appeal the erotic excesses of its protagonist. Tirso de Molina, who as a very young man had entered the Order of Mercy in Guadalajara, wanted to exploit his work for the edifying purposes of the repressive theology advocated by the Council of Trent, according to which the behaviour of those sinners who were determined to postpone the need to repent for their sins until the time of their death was unacceptable. The work was given a lukewarm reception in Spain, but became popular in France and Italy, and was rewritten by numerous authors (notably Molière in 1665 and Goldoni in 1736).

Lorenzo Da Ponte, a man of letters and a poet at the Court of Vienna, was not new to artistic collaboration with Mozart. In 1786 they had together produced the masterpiece that is The Marriage of Figaro. For the libretto of Don Giovanni he used as his model Il Convitato di pietra by Giovanni Bertati, which was the literary basis for the opera buffa of the same name composed by Giuseppe Gazzaniga early in 1787 and first performed in Venice in February of that year.

Mozart wrote almost the entire score of Don Giovanni in Prague; the main opera house of that city had commissioned the new work. Popular anecdote has it that the overture was composed just a few hours before the curtain was due to go up on the first night, and the orchestra played it on sight. According to another version, Mozart decided to compose the overture the evening before the dress rehearsal. He asked his wife Konstanze to tell him oriental fairy tales to help him stay awake, but fatigue got the better of him and he fell into a deep sleep. Awoken by Konstanze at 5 in the morning, Mozart completed his work by 7, when the copyist was due to come and collect the manuscript.

Aside from these anecdotes, one historical fact cannot be denied: on 28th October 1787, Prague witnessed the opening night of Don Giovanni, and it was a huge success, despite the fact that both singers and musicians had to deal with an extraordinarily demanding score.

The most eagerly awaited moment in the tragi-comic tale of Don Giovanni is without doubt Leporello’s reading of the catalogue of all the women who have been loved by his insatiable employer. Don Giovanni seduces and abandons women of all social classes and all ages for the pure collector’s "pleasure of adding them to the list".

Motivated by a primordial urge for life and pleasure, Don Giovanni is an individual whose behaviour is in conflict with the social order in which he lives. And yet he is popular: with women, who cannot decide whether to condemn him or to surrender to his flattery; and with men, who wish they could have at least some of his audacity.
If Tirso de Molina’s hero was a sort of Anti-Christ, Mozart’s Don Giovanni is a loveable rogue, a gallant rascal, unscrupulous and irresistible. With Mozart’s opera, the myth of the "punished dissolute" abandons the gloomy Counter-Reformation atmosphere which first gave it life, and becomes a vehicle of vital and irreverent irony and joie de vivre.

The plot:
Don Giovanni, wearing a mask, tries to seduce Donna Anna in her apartment. Hearing her cries, her father, the Commendatore, rushes in and fights a duel with the attacker, who kills him. Don Giovanni manages to escape and embarks on fresh adventures, which regularly come to nothing; this is partly due to constant interference by Donna Elvira, whom he seduced and abandoned some time before. He attempts to seduce Zerlina on the day of her marriage to Masetto, a peasant. Disguised as his own servant Leporello, he tries to seduce Donna Elvira’s maid. Finally, having taken refuge in the cemetery to escape the wrath of all those whom he has deceived, he rashly invites the funeral statue of the Commendatore to dinner. Against all the laws of nature, the statue accepts. The opera ends with the sinner plunging to the depths of the underworld. The final punishment inflicted on the sinner («... Questo è il fin di chi fa mal! E de’ perfidi la morte alla vita è sempre ugual» "...This is the end of those who do evil! And the death of traitors is always equal to their lives" ), in keeping with the loose morals of the libertine eighteenth century, is more a formal device than a response to a genuine need to condemn dissolute behaviour.