Don Juan ou Le Festin de Pierre (Don Juan, or the Stone Guest's Banquet) is a ballet with a libretto by Ranieri de' Calzabigi

Ranieri de' Calzabigi

Ranieri de' Calzabigi was an Italian poet and librettist, most famous for his collaboration with the composer Christoph Willibald Gluck on his "reform" operas....

, music by Christoph Willibald von Gluck, and choreography by Gasparo Angiolini

Gasparo Angiolini

Gasparo Angiolini , real name Domenico Maria Angiolo Gasparini, was an Italian dancer and choreographer, and composer. He was born in Florence and died in Milan....

. The ballet's first performance was in Vienna, Austria on Saturday, 17 October 1761, at the Theater am Kärntnertor

Theater am Kärntnertor

Theater am Kärntnertor or Kärntnertortheater was a prestigious theatre in Vienna during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries...

. The ballet follows the legend of Don Juan

Don Juan

Don Juan is a legendary, fictional libertine whose story has been told many times by many authors. El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra by Tirso de Molina is a play set in the fourteenth century that was published in Spain around 1630...

 and his descent into Hell

Hell

In many religious traditions, a hell is a place of suffering and punishment in the afterlife. Religions with a linear divine history often depict hells as endless. Religions with a cyclic history often depict a hell as an intermediary period between incarnations...

 after killing his inamorata's father in a duel.

Background

The ballet Don Juan was based on Molière

Molière

Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, known by his stage name Molière, was a French playwright and actor who is considered to be one of the greatest masters of comedy in Western literature...

's Dom Juan ou le Festin de pierre

Dom Juan

Dom Juan or The Feast with the Statue is a French play by Molière, based on the legend of Don Juan. Molière's characters Dom Juan and Sganarelle are the French counterparts to the Spanish Don Juan and Catalinón, characters who would later become familiar to opera goers as Don Giovanni and Leporello...

of 1665. Gluck's score is perhaps the most considerable written for eighteenth century ballet. The composer's understanding of dance as an autonomous art form completely independent of opera permitted him to compose a score free of conventional rhetoric or ornament, and utilized a structure that built toward an exciting and dramatically direct climax.

While choreographer Angiolini's rival Jean-Georges Noverre

Jean-Georges Noverre

Jean-Georges Noverre was a French dancer and balletmaster, and is generally considered the creator of ballet d'action, a precursor of the narrative ballets of the 19th century...

 composed ballets in Stuttgart

Stuttgart

Stuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The sixth-largest city in Germany, Stuttgart has a population of 600,038 while the metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million ....

, London, and Paris based on heroic gesture inspired, in part, by the plastique of David Garrick

David Garrick

David Garrick was an English actor, playwright, theatre manager and producer who influenced nearly all aspects of theatrical practice throughout the 18th century and was a pupil and friend of Dr Samuel Johnson...

 in England, Angiolini's passi d'azione in Vienna (prompted by the concepts explored by Franz Hilverding

Franz Hilverding

Franz Anton Christoph Hilverding , aka Hilferding, was an Austrian choreographer and dancer who first adapted Miguel Cervantes's novel Don Quixote for ballet. It was first staged in Vienna, Austria in 1740....

 and Gluck) accented dancing itself. Angiolini and Noverre never agreed on the place of music in ballet. Angiolini regarded music and dance as two separate components that the dancer was required to unite in his own body. Noverre disagreed and declared that a musical score would pre-set and manipulate the actions and movements of the performer. The protagonist would translate music into transparent gesture.

Plot summary

The overture

Overture

Overture in music is the term originally applied to the instrumental introduction to an opera...

 is a short sonata form

Sonata form

Sonata form is a large-scale musical structure used widely since the middle of the 18th century . While it is typically used in the first movement of multi-movement pieces, it is sometimes used in subsequent movements as well—particularly the final movement...

 sinfonietta

Sinfonietta (symphony)

A sinfonietta is a symphony that is smaller in scale or lighter in approach than a standard symphony. Although of Italian form, the word is not genuine in that language and has seldom been used by Italian composers. It appears to have been coined in 1874 by Joachim Raff for his Op...

in which the recurring motif of threatening trumpets plays a prominent part. The ballet's setting is Madrid

Madrid

Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...

. In the first act, Don Juan serenades Donna Elvira beneath her balcony. Her father, the Commander enters with sword drawn to protect his daughter. In the ensuing duel, Don Juan wounds the Commander, who rallies, attacks, then faints and dies. In the second act, Don Juan has prepared a banquet for his friends. Dances for his guests include a gavotte

Gavotte

The gavotte originated as a French folk dance, taking its name from the Gavot people of the Pays de Gap region of Dauphiné, where the dance originated. It is notated in 4/4 or 2/2 time and is of moderate tempo...

, contredanse, minuet

Minuet

A minuet, also spelled menuet, is a social dance of French origin for two people, usually in 3/4 time. The word was adapted from Italian minuetto and French menuet, and may have been from French menu meaning slender, small, referring to the very small steps, or from the early 17th-century popular...

, and fandango

Fandango

Fandango is a lively couple's dance, usually in triple metre, traditionally accompanied by guitars and castanets or hand-clapping . Fandango can both be sung and danced. Sung fandango is usually bipartite: it has an instrumental introduction followed by "variaciones"...

. A terrific knocking is suddenly heard at the door. Don Juan's servant provides comic relief as he scurries back and forth to the door. Don Juan finally opens the door, and discovers the marble statue of the dead Commander. He invites the Commander to dinner, but the statue invites Juan to dine at his tomb and then departs to the strains of a noble minuet. The final act is set in a graveyard where Don Juan rushes in accompanied by orchestral shivers. The Commander steps from his tomb to a stately minuet and scolds Juan accompanied by echoes of the dinner invitation. Juan confronts the Commander with frivolity, vanity, and courage, but the climax is reached when irrevocable judgment is passed upon Juan. To the strains of an ominous passacaglia

Passacaglia

The passacaglia is a musical form that originated in early seventeenth-century Spain and is still used by contemporary composers. It is usually of a serious character and is often, but not always, based on a bass-ostinato and written in triple metre....

, graves fly open, flames rise, and Juan sinks to Hell.