Mozart Opera Don Giovanni

Classical Music / Opera 

A Unique Blend of Comic and Serious Opera

Four of about twenty two operas of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart have remained extremely popular on stage and record. One of them is Don Giovanni. 

Don Giovanni is in two Acts, approximately two hours and thirty minutes. Libretto is in Italian by Lorenzo da Ponte after Giovanni Bertati's libretto for Giuseppe Gazzaniga's  The Stone Guest, the contemporary version of the Don Juan legends.It was first performed 
 
First performance: National Theatre, Prague, in October 29, 1787. Subtitled "drama giocoso," the opera blends comedy, melodrama, and supernatural elements. In Vienna, it was first performed May 7, 1788.

Franz Liszt

Classical Music /  Composer's Datebook: October 22

Franz Liszt, his life, musical style, influence and works. Arguably considered the supreme Romantic composer. He is best remembered for his orchestral symphonic poems and for his unsurpassed piano virtuosity.

Hungarian composer and piano virtuoso Franz Liszt (Raiding, October 22, 1811 - Bayreuth, July 31, 1886), is best remembered for his concept of descriptive orchestral music he called 'symphonic poem ,' also known as 'tone poem,' and as the most talented pianist of his time.

His primary interests in life were threefold - religion, music, and the arts; perhaps we can add the fourth, a female companionship - in equal fervor.

Liszt was taught the piano by his father and later by Carl Czerny in Vienna, he made his debut establishing himself as a remarkable concert pianist by age 12. In Paris he studied theory and composition, then travelled widely in Europe, at age 14, writing the opera Don Sanche in Paris.  There, he also met Chopin and Berlioz.