[Musical excerpt—­“Batti, batti, o bel Masetto”]

The most insinuating of melodies floating over an obbligato of the solo violoncello “like a love charm,” as Gounod says.  Then the celebration of her victory when she captures one of his hands and knows that he is yielding:—­

[Musical excerpt—­“Pace, pace o vita mia”]

A new melody, blither, happier, but always the violoncello murmuring in blissful harmony with the seductive voice and rejoicing in the cunning witcheries which lull Masetto’s suspicions to sleep.  Now all go into Don Giovanni’s palace, from which the sounds of dance music and revelry are floating out.  Donna Elvira, Donna Anna, and Don Ottavio, who come to confront him who has wronged them all, are specially bidden, as was the custom, because they appeared in masks.  Within gayety is supreme.  A royal host, this Don Giovanni!  Not only are there refreshments for all, but he has humored both classes of guests in the arrangement of the programme of dances.  Let there be a minuet, a country-dance, and an allemande, he had said to Leporello in that dizzying song of instruction which whirls past our senses like a mad wind:  “Finch’ han dal vino.”  No one so happy as Mozart when it came to providing the music for these dances.  Would you connoisseurs in music like counterpoint?  We shall give it you;—­three dances shall proceed at once and together, despite their warring duple and triple rhythms:—­

[Musical excerpts]

Louis Viardot, who wrote a little book describing the autograph of “Don Giovanni,” says that Mozart wrote in the score where the three bands play thus simultaneously the word accordano as a direction to the stage musicians to imitate the action of tuning their instruments before falling in with their music.  Of this fact the reprint of the libretto as used at Prague and Vienna contains no mention, but a foot-note gives other stage directions which indicate how desirous Mozart was that his ingenious and humorous conceit should not be overlooked.  At the point where the minuet, which was the dance of people of quality, is played, he remarked, “Don Ottavio dances the minuet with Donna Anna”; at the contra-dance in 2-4 time, “Don Giovanni begins to dance a contra-dance with Zerlina”; at the entrance of the waltz, “Leporello dances a ‘Teitsch’ with Masetto.”  The proper execution of Mozart’s elaborate scheme puts the resources of an opera-house to a pretty severe test, but there is ample reward in the result.  Pity that, as a rule, so little intelligence is shown by the ballet master in arranging the dances!  There is a special significance in Mozart’s direction that the cavalier humor the peasant girl by stepping a country-dance with her, which is all lost when he attempts to lead her into the aristocratic minuet, as is usually done.