Simply Glorious

Los Angeles Opera revives 'Don Giovanni',
by MARIA NOCKIN

In 1630, Spanish monk Tirso de Molina (1571-1648) published a play called El burlador de Sevilla ('The Trickster of Seville'). Set in the fourteenth century, it had already been performed for some years before it was printed, but this was the first time a version of the Don Juan legend was given permanent form. The story, of course, had been handed down by word of mouth for generations and was known from the Mediterranean to Iceland, but the characters in the Molina play had a verisimilitude that their legendary shadows lacked.

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