[Musical excerpt]

in the last scene of the opera.  They were an afterthought of the composer’s.  They did not appear in the original score of the scene, as the autograph shows, but were written in after the music had once been completed.  They are crowded into the staves in tiny notes which sometimes extend from one measure into the next.  This circumstance and the other, that they are all fairly written out in the autograph of the overture, indicate that they were conceived either at one of the rehearsals or while Mozart was writing the overture.  They could not have been suggested at the first performance, as Jahn seems to imply. {3} The introduction is only thirty measures long, and the Allegro which follows is made up of new material.  I quote again from Gounod:  “But suddenly, and with feverish audacity, the Allegro breaks out in the major key, an Allegro full of passion and delirium, deaf to the warnings of Heaven, regardless of remorse, enraptured of pleasure, madly inconstant and daring, rapid and impetuous as a torrent, flashing and swift as a sword, overleaping all obstacles, scaling balconies, and bewildering the alguazils.” {4} From the tragic introduction through the impetuous main section we are led to a peaceful night scene in the garden before the house of Donna Anna.  There Leporello, the servant of Don Giovanni, is awaiting in discontented mood for the return of his master, who has entered the house in quest of amatory adventure.  Leporello is weary of the service in which he is engaged, and contrasts his state with that of the Don. (Air:  “Notte e giorno faticar.”) He will throw off the yoke and be a gentleman himself.  He has just inflated himself with pride at the thought, when he hears footsteps, and the poltroon in his nature asserts itself.  He hides behind the shrubbery.  Don Giovanni hurries from the house, concealing his features with his cloak and impeded by Donna Anna, who clings to him, trying to get a look into his face and calling for help.  Don Giovanni commands silence and threatens.  The Commandant, Donna Anna’s father, appears with drawn sword and challenges the intruder.  Don Giovanni hesitates to draw against so old a man, but the Commandant will not parley.  They fight.  At first the attacks and defences are deliberate (the music depicts it all with wonderful vividness), but at the last it is thrust and parry, thrust and parry, swiftly, mercilessly.  The Commandant is no match for his powerful young opponent, and falls, dying.  A few broken ejaculations, and all is ended.  The orchestra sings a slow descending chromatic phrase “as if exhausted by the blood which oozes from the wound,” says Gounod.  How simple the means of expression!  But let the modern composer, with all his apparatus of new harmonies and his multitude of instruments, point out a scene to match it in the entire domain of the lyric drama!  Don Giovanni and his lumpish servant, who, with all his coward instincts, cannot help trying his wit at the outcome of the adventure,