«Дон Жуан» Моцарта и «Неистовый Дон Жуан» героя романа Гастона Леру «призрак оперы» в свете романтической концепции оперы

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the research of the reception specificity of the legend about Don Giovanni in musical culture. The main methods of intertextual and intermedial analysis as well as legend’s peculiarities functions in the literature and opera are considered in this article. The article deals with the history of acquaintance public with Mozart’s Opera „Don Giovanni”, dates of premieres in Prague, Leipzig, Warsaw, Moscow, and Odessa. Author of this paper reflects on the factors that influenced the romantic conception of Mozart’s music and the image of Don Giovanni in it. For romantics (Hoffmann, Wagner, Kierkegaard, Liszt, Strauss) Don Giovanni was the personality, which was looking for a way to harmony with Universe in love. They felt the Supreme manifestation of the spirit in music. It is thanks to the brilliant music of Mozart Donna Anna fall in love to Don Giovanni in Hoffman’s novel. The main objects of comparison in the article were a Mozart’s opera and opera, which was composed by Phantom of the Opera in novel by French writer Gaston Leroux. These works of art are absolutely contrasting. Don Giovanni in Mozart’s opera is deeply (passionately) attached to life. Eric (The Phantom of the Opera), who has turned his life into a part in the spectacle about Don Giovanni, surrounds himself with signs of death. The place of declaring Eric’s love to Kristin is underground part of Opera Theatre. Don Giovanni by Mozart is „punished lecher”. Don Giovanni by Eric in Leroux’s novel – triumphant winner. The hero by Leroux who could not overcome own ugliness and split with all people, wins a victory over them with the aid of music. But if Mozart's music has therapeutic effect on people, Eric’s opera was supposed to burn the whole world. The difference between the two operas (real and invented by Gaston Leroux) has Significant place among these reasons belongs to the special features of epochs of the creating of operas. Mozart created his "Don Giovanni" at the age of Humanism. Eric in Leroux’s novel at the epoch of decadence with it’s worship of destruction, collapse and death. But there is more significant reason of difference – aesthetic. Genius, creating his work is freed from all ordinary and accidental including his own grievances and joys. As a result he successes to catch the meaning of the timeless, universal. Eric, who was immersed in his own sense of injury and his own cares, resentments and passions, created music for himself. His music disappeared with him: dying he took it to his grave, even not trying to demonstrate it to the world.