The last scene is reached.  Don Giovanni, seated at his table, eats, drinks, indulges in badinage with his servant, and listens to the music of his private band.  The musicians play melodies from popular operas of the period in which Mozart wrote—­not Spanish melodies of the unfixed time in which the veritable Don Juan may have lived:—­

[Musical excerpts—­From Martin’s “Una cosa rara.”  From “Fra i due litiganti” by Sarti.  From “Nozze di Figaro.”]

Mozart feared anachronisms as little as Shakespeare.  His Don Giovanni was contemporary with himself and familiar with the repertory of the Vienna Opera.  The autograph discloses that the ingenious conceit was wholly Mozart’s.  It was he who wrote the words with which Leporello greets the melodies from “Una cosa rara,” “I due Litiganti,” and “Le Nozze di Figaro,” and when Leporello hailed the tune “Non piu andrai” from the last opera with words “Questo poi la conosco pur troppo” ("This we know but too well"), he doubtless scored a point with his first audience in Prague which the German translator of the opera never dreamed of.  Even the German critics of to-day seem dense in their unwillingness to credit Mozart with a purely amiable purpose in quoting the operas of his rivals, Martin and Sarti.  The latter showed himself ungrateful for kindnesses received at Mozart’s hands by publicly denouncing an harmonic progression in one of the famous six quartets dedicated to Haydn as a barbarism, but there was no ill-will in the use of the air from “I due Litiganti” as supper music for the delectation of the Don.  Mozart liked the melody, and had written variations on it for the pianoforte.

The supper is interrupted by Donna Elvira, who comes to plead on her knees with Don Giovanni to change his mode of life.  He mocks at her solicitude and invites her to sit with him at table.  She leaves the room in despair, but sends back a piercing shriek from the corridor.  Leporello is sent out to report on the cause of the cry, and returns trembling as with an ague and mumbling that he has seen a ghost—­a ghost of stone, whose footsteps, “Ta, ta, ta,” sounded like a mighty hammer on the floor.  Don Giovanni himself goes to learn the cause of the disturbance, and Leporello hides under the table.  The intrepid Don opens the door.  There is a clap of thunder, and there enters the ghost of the Commandant in the form of his statue as seen in the churchyard.  The music which has been described in connection with the overture accompanies the conversation of the spectre and his amazed host.  Don Giovanni’s repeated offer of hospitality is rejected, but in turn he is asked if he will return the visit.  He will.  “Your hand as a pledge,” says the spectre.  All unabashed, the doomed man places his hand in that of the statue, which closes upon it like a vise.  Then an awful fear shakes the body of Don Giovanni, and a cry of horror is forced out of his lips.  “Repent, while there is yet time,” admonishes