LPPM MMV "The Catalogue Aria"

[Dave Monroe]

"Then, surprisingly-- and, for Siegel,
embarrassingly--she began reeling off a list of the
affairs she had had in all the underdeveloped areas
she had visited for the State Dept.; several pages of
unofficial statistics which sounded a little like the
Catalogue aria from Don Giovanni." (MMV, p. 8)


Leporello: "Catalogue" Aria [Act I, Scene 2]

PLOT SO FAR :

Donna Elvira has, prior to the beginning of the opera,
been seduced by Don Giovanni and subsequently
abandoned by him.

In Scene 2 of the opera (Scene 1 being the murder of
the Commendatore), Don Giovanni and his side-kick,
Leporello, spy a woman and begin to pursue her. The
woman is obviously in great distress, and DG offers
her words of comfort, whereupon the woman, none other
than Donna Elvira, turns round, recognizes him ("Chi è
lá?"--the beginning of the recitative) and denounces
him. DG slips away, characteristically leaving
Leporello to cope with the situation.

Leporello does so heavy-handedly by showing her the
catalogue that he has compiled of all DG's conquests,
country by country, type by type. This is intended to
console her. At the end, she leaves the stage vowing
vengeance on DG.

This famous aria belongs to a tradition of such
"catalogue arias." It is comic, even farcical, and yet
it reveals the dark side of DG's character as fully as
at an point in the opera.

http://www.columbia.edu/itc/music/NYCO/dongiovanni/catalogue.html

http://www.columbia.edu/itc/music/NYCO/DonGiovanniMadamina.html

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Don Giovanni (1787)

http://www.metopera.org/synopses/giovanni.html

http://www.columbia.edu/itc/music/NYCO/dongiovanni/

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