Mozart: Don Giovanni (The Rake Punished) KV 527 (Prague, 1787)

As early as 1788, the year of Don Giovanni's premiere in Vienna, the first German translation by Christian Gottlieb Neefe appeared, followed in 1789 by a translation by Heinrich Gottlieb Schmieder for the first German-language performance at the Mainz Electoral National Theatre. Numerous other "Germanizations" followed, which paid little attention to the Italian original and made drastic changes and distortions. It was not until 1896 that Ernst von Possart, the General Intendant of the Munich Court Theatre, and Hermann Levi, the director of the Munich Court Opera, made a serious attempt to restore the work to its original form. The translation that Hermann Levi created for this memorable performance was largely adopted by Georg Schünemann. Most German-language performances of Giovanni are based on this. However, anyone who studies Da Ponte's libretto will soon realize that even Schünemann's translation – as much as it stands out from its predecessors – is in many places still too far from the original and that it does not sufficiently correspond to the clarity and directness and sometimes the actual meaning of Da Ponte's text. Of course, a translation can rarely meet all requirements simultaneously (faithful reproduction, retention of note values, correct phrasing and emphasis, attention to rhyme, euphony, and word repetitions, congruence of textual and musical climax, use of similar vowels as in Italian in high passages and coloratura, avoidance of "Opera German" and inversion, etc.), and in individual cases, one must decide where the emphasis should lie. My translation represents an attempt to come as close as possible to Da Ponte's original with a singable German text.

Merk	Edition Peters
Serie	Opera
Instrument	Vocal Score/Piano-Vocal Score
Artikelnummer	EP8913
Barcode (EAN)	9790014102876