Write a paper on the Enlightenment and Mozart’s Don Giovanni
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Each student must label their file in the following format (Name_CWID Number) For example, DakPrescott_11105956043 (label file DiegoTorresSarubbi_100328944 please and thank you)
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MUST be between 700-1000 words (Word count pertains to body of paper, not headings). There is always a penalty for low word count.
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Assignment Details
The Enlightenment Era was an important shift in intellectual process that quickly influenced nearly every aspect of life in Europe and around the world. This assignment asks the question, “What was the Enlightenment?” “How did it affect life in Europe?” and “How did it affect Mozart’s opera, Don Giovanni?” Your essay should address all three of these questions in that order, devoting a section to each question.
QUESTION 1: What was the Enlightenment?
In this section, be sure to show that you understand particular perspectives, beliefs, traditions, and needs of the culture and community to which Mozart and many other Classical Era composers belonged. Later on in the paper, the points that you make about the real-world effects of Enlightment thinking on everyday life–and on Mozart’s decisions as a composer–will rest on the foundation you provide in this section.
QUESTION 2: How did these enlightened philosophies affect life in Europe?
Your essay should shift from a general definition of the Enlightenment to specific examples of how this new philosophy affected business, government, religion, education, etc. This philosophy affected almost every aspect of life, so there are lots of examples available. In this section, be sure to write clearly and directly about how societal issues such as those pertaining to the Enlightenment can affect such communities and/or cultures as that of Mozart in the 1780s and 90s.
QUESTION 3: How did enlightened philosophies affect Mozart’s opera, Don Giovanni?
At this point, your work should indicate that enlightened thinking affected the lives of the working class, women, nobility, etc. In fact, many believed that the noble class should be abolished (this will eventually happen in France). In this third and final section, it is crucial that your paper address how social elements related to the Enlightenment influenced specific aspects of what Mozart did in creating Don Giovanni. You also need to show, explicitly, that you recognize the impact that personal and social actions, such as the creation of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, can have on a community or culture.
Since Don Giovanni is about nobility, class, women, freedom; here are some questions you may want to address in this final section. Remember, you don’t have to answer all these questions, just pick one.
Mozart was a musical genius who was treated as a servant, so he didn’t like the idea of class, and especially nobility, very much. The ideas of the Enlightenment were very suited to him because of this. In his operas, Mozart frequently framed nobility as amoral, oversexed, stupid, and generally evil. The Enlightenment enabled Mozart to create evil characters out of nobility for the first time in the history of opera. Does Don Giovanni follow this pattern?
The opera was written two years before the French Revolution. How does its ideas about power structures reflect the class conflict in Europe at the time? Does Don Giovanni take advantage of his social status?
How is class indicated by the music, the costumes and other elements in Don Giovanni?
What kind of social background or class did Don Giovanni come from? How does his social position affect his actions in the opera? How does his class affect how the other characters treat him? Examine particularly his relationship with Leporello and Zerlina and Masetto. What was the code of courtly behavior that Don Giovanni was expected to abide by? How does he transgress it?
Examine Don Giovanni through the lens of the Enlightenment. Is he a symbol of liberty or social disruption? The Enlightenment granted permission for people to throw away the bonds of religion and morality and it gave them the freedom to do what they wanted. Is Don Giovanni an example of this?
Based on the opera, what do you think the status of women was during Mozartʼs time? Are the women in the opera treated as equals or are they used as social tools for the entertainment of men?
