The Don Giovanni Moment: Essays on the Legacy of an Opera

Published by Columbia University Press 2006

The Don Giovanni Moment

Essays on the Legacy of an Opera

Edited by: Lydia Goehr and Daniel Herwitz

In the series Columbia Themes in Philosophy, Social Criticism, and the Arts

https://doi.org/10.7312/goeh13754

Overview
Contents

About this book

The Don Giovanni Moment is the first book to examine the aesthetic and moral legacy of Mozart's masterpiece in the literature, philosophy, and culture of the nineteenth century. Scholars address Don Giovanni's impact on the philosophical visions of Kierkegaard, Goethe, and Williams and its influence on the literary and dramatic works of Pushkin, Hoffmann, Mörike, Byron, Wagner, Strauss, and Shaw. Through a close and careful analysis of the opera's literary and philosophical reception and its many appropriations, rewritings, and retellings, these contributors treat Don Giovanni as a vantage point from which theory and philosophy can reconsider romanticism's central themes. As lively and passionate as the opera itself, these essays are a spirited contribution to the debate over the meaning, character, and powerful legacy of this remarkable work of art.

Mozart's Don Giovanni is an operatic masterpiece full of iconic and mythical tensions that still resonate today. The work redefines the terms of power, seduction, and morality, and the resulting conflict between the aesthetic and the ethical is deeply rooted in the Enlightenment and romanticism.

The Don Giovanni Moment is the first book to examine the aesthetic and moral legacy of Mozart's opera in the literature, philosophy, and culture of the nineteenth century. The prominent scholars in this collection address the opera's impact on the philosophical visions of Kierkegaard, Goethe, and Williams and its influence on the literary and dramatic works of Pushkin, Hoffmann, Mörike, Byron, Wagner, Strauss, and Shaw. Through a close and careful analysis of Don Giovanni's literary and philosophical reception and its many appropriations, rewritings, and retellings, these contributors treat the opera as a vantage point from which theory and philosophy can reconsider romanticism's central themes.

As lively and passionate as the opera itself, these essays continue the spirited debate over the meaning and character of Don Giovanni and its powerful legacy. Together they prove that Mozart's brilliant artistic achievement is as potent and relevant today as when it was first performed two centuries ago.

Author / Editor information

Lydia Goehr is professor of philosophy and aesthetics at Columbia University. She is the author of The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music; The Quest for Voice: Music, Politics, and the Limits of Philosophy, and Elective Affinities: Musical Essays on the History of Aesthetic Theory. Daniel Herwitz is the Mary Fair Croushore Professor of Humanities and director of the Institute for the Humanities at the University of Michigan. He is the author of The Star as Icon: Celebrity in the Age of Mass Consumption, and his short stories have appeared in the Michigan Quarterly Review.

Reviews

this new collection is unusual and thought-provoking.

Edmund J. Goehring:
One marvels at how Don Giovanni ranges over the thought and culture of the nineteenth century and its aftermath... [and] applauds the editors.

Kevin S. Amidon:
[This] new volume enriches the flourishing field of opera studies both within and beyond German studies.

Alex Ross:
The Don Giovanni Moment is the book for readers who have had enough of the discussion of who Mozart really was, and who want to understand the music's impact on the intellect and, more widely, its influence on Western culture.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Contributors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xi
Introduction Lydia Goehr and Daniel Herwitz Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xv
1. Don Giovanni: “And what communion hath light with darkness?” Ingrid Rowland Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
2. Don Juan and Faust: On the Interaction Between Two Literary Myths Ernst Osterkamp Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	19
3. “Hidden Secrets of the Self ”: E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Reading of Don Giovanni Richard Eldridge Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	33
4. Don Juan in Nicholas’s Russia (Pushkin’s The Stone Guest) Boris Gasparov Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	47
5. Mörike’s Mozart and the Scent of a Woman Hans Rudolf Vaget Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	61
6. The Gothic Libertine: The Shadow of Don Giovanni in Romantic Music and Culture Thomas S. Grey Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	75
7. Don Juan as an Idea Bernard Williams Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	107
Kierkegaard Writes His Opera Daniel Herwitz Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	119
9. The Curse and Promise of the Absolutely Musical: Tristan und Isolde and Don Giovanni Lydia Goehr Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	137
10. Authority and Judgment in Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Wagner’s Ring Philip Kitcher and Richard Schacht Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	161
11. Mozart’s Don Giovanni in Shaw’s Comedy Agnes Heller Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	181
12. Giovanni auf Naxos Brian Soucek Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	193
13. Homage to Adorno’s “Homage to Zerlina” Berthold Hoeckner Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	211
14. Adorno and the Don Nikolaus Bacht Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	225

Language: English
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 264
Illustrations
- Illustrations: 14
- Other: 14 illus

eBook

Published: August 8, 2006
ISBN: 9780231510646