Don Juan
Encyclopedia
Libertine
A libertine is one devoid of most moral restraints, which are seen as unnecessary or undesirable, especially one who ignores or even spurns accepted morals and forms of behavior sanctified by the larger society. Libertines, also known as rakes, placed value on physical pleasures, meaning those...
whose story has been told many times by many authors. El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra
El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra
The Trickster of Seville and the Stone Guest is a play by Tirso de Molina, first published in Spain around 1630, though it may have been performed as early as 1616...
(The Trickster of Seville and the Stone Guest) by Tirso de Molina
Tirso de Molina
Tirso de Molina was a Spanish Baroque dramatist, poet and a Roman Catholic monk.Originally Gabriel Téllez, he was born in Madrid. He studied at Alcalá de Henares, joined the Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mercy on November 4, 1600, and entered the Monastery of San Antolín at Guadalajara,...
is a play set in the fourteenth century that was published in Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
around 1630. Evidence suggests it is the first written version of the Don Juan legend. Among the best known works about this character today are Molière
Molière
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, known by his stage name Molière, was a French playwright and actor who is considered to be one of the greatest masters of comedy in Western literature...
's play Dom Juan ou le Festin de pierre
Dom Juan
Dom Juan or The Feast with the Statue is a French play by Molière, based on the legend of Don Juan. Molière's characters Dom Juan and Sganarelle are the French counterparts to the Spanish Don Juan and Catalinón, characters who would later become familiar to opera goers as Don Giovanni and Leporello...
(1665), Byron
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, later George Gordon Noel, 6th Baron Byron, FRS , commonly known simply as Lord Byron, was a British poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement...
's epic poem Don Juan
Don Juan (Byron)
Don Juan is a satiric poem by Lord Byron, based on the legend of Don Juan, which Byron reverses, portraying Juan not as a womanizer but as someone easily seduced by women. It is a variation on the epic form. Byron himself called it an "Epic Satire"...
(1821), José de Espronceda
José de Espronceda
José Ignacio Javier Oriol Encarnación de Espronceda y Delgado was a famous Romantic Spanish poet.-Life:Espronceda was born in Almendralejo, at the Province of Badajoz. As a youth, he studied at the Colegio San Mateo at Madrid, having as teacher Alberto Lista...
's poem El estudiante de Salamanca
El estudiante de Salamanca
The Student of Salamanca is a work by Spanish Romantic poet José de Espronceda. It was published in fragments beginning in 1837; the complete poem was published in 1840 in the volume Poesías. Parts of it are poetry, other parts drama...
(1840) and José Zorrilla's play Don Juan Tenorio
Don Juan Tenorio
Don Juan Tenorio: Drama religioso-fantástico en dos partes , is a play written in 1844 by José Zorrilla. It is the more romantic of the two principal Spanish-language literary interpretations of the myth of Don Juan...
(1844). The most influential version of all is Don Giovanni
Don Giovanni
Don Giovanni is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and with an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It was premiered by the Prague Italian opera at the Teatro di Praga on October 29, 1787...
, an opera composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
with libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte
Lorenzo Da Ponte
Lorenzo Da Ponte was a Venetian opera librettist and poet. He wrote the librettos for 28 operas by 11 composers, including three of Mozart's greatest operas, Don Giovanni, The Marriage of Figaro and Così fan tutte....
, first performed in Prague in 1787 (with Giacomo Casanova
Giacomo Casanova
Giacomo Girolamo Casanova de Seingalt was an Italian adventurer and author from the Republic of Venice. His autobiography, Histoire de ma vie , is regarded as one of the most authentic sources of the customs and norms of European social life during the 18th century...
probably in the audience) and itself the source of inspiration for works by E. T. A. Hoffmann, Alexander Pushkin, Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Aabye Kierkegaard was a Danish Christian philosopher, theologian and religious author. He was a critic of idealist intellectuals and philosophers of his time, such as Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling and Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel...
, George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
and Albert Camus
Albert Camus
Albert Camus was a French author, journalist, and key philosopher of the 20th century. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement, which was opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton.Camus was awarded the 1957...
.
Don Juan is used synonymously for "womanizer", especially in Spanish slang
Slang
Slang is the use of informal words and expressions that are not considered standard in the speaker's language or dialect but are considered more acceptable when used socially. Slang is often to be found in areas of the lexicon that refer to things considered taboo...
, and the term Don Juanism
Don Juanism
Don Juanism is a non-clinical term for the desire, in a man, to have sex with many different female partners; that is: a "seducer of women."The name derives from Don Juan of opera and fiction, who seems in turn to have been patterned after the Spanish noble Don Juan Tenorio. The term satyriasis is...
is sometimes used as a synonym for satyriasis.
Don Juan legend
Don Juan is a rogue and a libertine who takes great pleasure in seducing women (mainly virgins) and enjoys fighting their men. Later, in a graveyard, Don Juan encounters a statue of Don Gonzalo, the dead father of a girl he has seduced, Doña Ines de Ulloa, and impiously invites the father to dine with him; the statue gladly accepts. The father's ghost arrives for dinner at Don Juan's house and in turn invites Don Juan to dine with him in the graveyard. Don Juan accepts and goes to the father's grave, where the statue asks to shake Don Juan's hand. When he extends his arm, the statue grabs hold and drags him away to HellHell
In many religious traditions, a hell is a place of suffering and punishment in the afterlife. Religions with a linear divine history often depict hells as endless. Religions with a cyclic history often depict a hell as an intermediary period between incarnations...
.
Pronunciation
In Castilian SpanishCastilian Spanish
Castilian Spanish is a term related to the Spanish language, but its exact meaning can vary even in that language. In English Castilian Spanish usually refers to the variety of European Spanish spoken in north and central Spain or as the language standard for radio and TV speakers...
, Don Juan is pronounced doŋˈxwan. The usual English pronunciation is ˌdɒnˈwɑːn, with two syllables and a silent "J
J
Ĵ or ĵ is a letter in Esperanto orthography representing the sound .While Esperanto orthography uses a diacritic for its four postalveolar consonants, as do the Latin-based Slavic alphabets, the base letters are Romano-Germanic...
". However, in Byron's epic poem it rhymes with ruin and true one, indicating that it was intended to have the trisyllabic spelling pronunciation /ˌdɒnˈdʒuːən/. This would have been characteristic of his English literary predecessors who often deliberately imposed partisan English pronunciations on Spanish names, such as Don Quixote /ˌdɒnˈkwɪksət/.
Chronology of works derived from the story of Don Juan
- 1630: Tirso de MolinaTirso de MolinaTirso de Molina was a Spanish Baroque dramatist, poet and a Roman Catholic monk.Originally Gabriel Téllez, he was born in Madrid. He studied at Alcalá de Henares, joined the Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mercy on November 4, 1600, and entered the Monastery of San Antolín at Guadalajara,...
's play El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedraEl burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedraThe Trickster of Seville and the Stone Guest is a play by Tirso de Molina, first published in Spain around 1630, though it may have been performed as early as 1616... - 1643: Paolo Zehentner's play Promontorium Malae Spei
- 1650: Giacinto Andrea CicogniniGiacinto Andrea CicogniniGiacinto Andrea Cicognini was an Italian playwright and librettist, the son of poet and playwright Jacopo Cicognini.Cicognini was born in Florence. In 1627, he graduated from the University of Pisa, and he lived in Florence from 1640 to 1645 where he have legal advice to the poet and playwright...
's play Il convitato di pietra - 1658: Dorimon (Nicolas Drouin's) Le festin de pierre, ou le fils criminel
- 1659: Jean Deschamps, Sieur de Villiers's play Le Festin de Pierre ou le Fils criminel
- 1665: MolièreMolièreJean-Baptiste Poquelin, known by his stage name Molière, was a French playwright and actor who is considered to be one of the greatest masters of comedy in Western literature...
's comedy Dom Juan ou le Festin de pierreDom JuanDom Juan or The Feast with the Statue is a French play by Molière, based on the legend of Don Juan. Molière's characters Dom Juan and Sganarelle are the French counterparts to the Spanish Don Juan and Catalinón, characters who would later become familiar to opera goers as Don Giovanni and Leporello... - 1669: Rosimon's Festin de pierre, ou l’athée foudroyé
- 1676: Thomas ShadwellThomas ShadwellThomas Shadwell was an English poet and playwright who was appointed poet laureate in 1689.-Life:Shadwell was born at Stanton Hall, Norfolk, and educated at Bury St Edmunds School, and at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, which he entered in 1656. He left the university without a degree, and...
's play The Libertine - 17th century: L'ateista fulminato, Italian play by unknown author
- 1714?: Antonio de ZamoraAntonio de ZamoraAntonio de Zamora was a Spanish playwright and writer....
's play No hay plazo que no se cumpla ni deuda que no se pague o convidado de piedra - 1730: Antonio DenzioAntonio DenzioAntonio Denzio was an Italian impresario, tenor, and librettist. Born in Venice to a family of musicians and operatic personnel, he pursued a career mainly as a singer until 1724, when he traveled to Bohemia as a member of the opera company of Antonio Maria Peruzzi, probably his uncle...
's opera La pravità castigataLa pravità castigataLa pravità castigata is a 1730 pastiche with music by multiple composers and an Italian language libretto by Antonio Denzio. It is the first 18th-century opera based on the Don Juan legend...
, with music mainly by Antonio CaldaraAntonio CaldaraAntonio Caldara was an Italian Baroque composer.Caldara was born in Venice , the son of a violinist. He became a chorister at St Mark's in Venice, where he learned several instruments, probably under the instruction of Giovanni Legrenzi... - 1736: Carlo GoldoniCarlo GoldoniCarlo Osvaldo Goldoni was an Italian playwright and librettist from the Republic of Venice. His works include some of Italy's most famous and best-loved plays. Audiences have admired the plays of Goldoni for their ingenious mix of wit and honesty...
's play Don Giovanni Tenorio ossia Il dissoluto - 1761: Christoph Willibald GluckChristoph Willibald GluckChristoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck was an opera composer of the early classical period. After many years at the Habsburg court at Vienna, Gluck brought about the practical reform of opera's dramaturgical practices that many intellectuals had been campaigning for over the years...
's and Gasparo AngioliniGasparo AngioliniGasparo Angiolini , real name Domenico Maria Angiolo Gasparini, was an Italian dancer and choreographer, and composer. He was born in Florence and died in Milan....
's ballet Don JuanDon Juan (ballet)Don Juan ou Le Festin de Pierre is a ballet with a libretto by Ranieri de' Calzabigi, music by Christoph Willibald von Gluck, and choreography by Gasparo Angiolini. The ballet's first performance was in Vienna, Austria on Saturday, 17 October 1761, at the Theater am Kärntnertor... - 1776: Vincenzo RighiniVincenzo RighiniVincenzo Maria Righini was an Italian composer, singer and kapellmeister.- Biography :Righini was born at Bologna and studied singing and composition with Padre Martini in his home town. Initially he performed as a singer in Florence and Rome , however, according to Fétis he made his debut as a...
's opera Il convitato di pietra - 1787: Giovanni BertatiGiovanni BertatiGiovanni Bertati is an Italian librettist.In 1763, Bertati wrote his first libretto, La morte di Dimone , set to music by Antonio Tozzi. Two years later, L'isola della fortuna , based on Bertati's libretto and Andrea Luchesi's music, was performed in Vienna...
's opera Don Giovanni, music by Giuseppe GazzanigaGiuseppe GazzanigaGiuseppe Gazzaniga was a member of the Neapolitan school of opera composers. He composed fifty-one operas and is considered to be one of the last Italian opera buffa composers.-Biography:... - 1787: Lorenzo da PonteLorenzo Da PonteLorenzo Da Ponte was a Venetian opera librettist and poet. He wrote the librettos for 28 operas by 11 composers, including three of Mozart's greatest operas, Don Giovanni, The Marriage of Figaro and Così fan tutte....
's opera Don GiovanniDon GiovanniDon Giovanni is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and with an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It was premiered by the Prague Italian opera at the Teatro di Praga on October 29, 1787...
, music by MozartWolfgang Amadeus MozartWolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music... - 1813: E.T.A. HoffmannE.T.A. HoffmannErnst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann , better known by his pen name E.T.A. Hoffmann , was a German Romantic author of fantasy and horror, a jurist, composer, music critic, draftsman and caricaturist...
's novella Don Juan (later collected in Fantasiestücke in Callots Manier) - 1821: Byron's epic poem Don JuanDon Juan (Byron)Don Juan is a satiric poem by Lord Byron, based on the legend of Don Juan, which Byron reverses, portraying Juan not as a womanizer but as someone easily seduced by women. It is a variation on the epic form. Byron himself called it an "Epic Satire"...
- 1829: Christian Dietrich GrabbeChristian Dietrich GrabbeChristian Dietrich Grabbe was a German dramatist.Born in Detmold, Lippe, he wrote many historical plays and is also known for his use of satire and irony. He suffered from an unhappy marriage...
's play Don Juan und Faust - 1830: Pushkin's play Каменный гость (Kamenny Gost, The Stone GuestThe Stone GuestThe Stone Guest is a poetic drama by Alexander Pushkin based on the Spanish legend of Don Juan. The Stone Guest was written in 1830 as part of his four short plays known as The Little Tragedies...
) set as an opera in 1872 - 1831: Alexandre DumasAlexandre Dumas, pèreAlexandre Dumas, , born Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie was a French writer, best known for his historical novels of high adventure which have made him one of the most widely read French authors in the world...
' play Don Juan de Maraña - 1831: Balzac's short story L'Élixir de longue vie (The Elixir of Life)
- 1834: Prosper MériméeProsper MériméeProsper Mérimée was a French dramatist, historian, archaeologist, and short story writer. He is perhaps best known for his novella Carmen, which became the basis of Bizet's opera Carmen.-Life:...
's novella Les âmes du Purgatoire - 1840: José de EsproncedaJosé de EsproncedaJosé Ignacio Javier Oriol Encarnación de Espronceda y Delgado was a famous Romantic Spanish poet.-Life:Espronceda was born in Almendralejo, at the Province of Badajoz. As a youth, he studied at the Colegio San Mateo at Madrid, having as teacher Alberto Lista...
's El estudiante de SalamancaEl estudiante de SalamancaThe Student of Salamanca is a work by Spanish Romantic poet José de Espronceda. It was published in fragments beginning in 1837; the complete poem was published in 1840 in the volume Poesías. Parts of it are poetry, other parts drama... - 1841: Franz LisztFranz LisztFranz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...
's Réminiscences de Don JuanRéminiscences de Don JuanRéminiscences de Don Juan is an opera fantasy for piano by Franz Liszt on themes from Mozart's Don Giovanni. It is extremely technically demanding. For this reason, and perhaps also because of its length and dramatic intensity, it does not appear in concert programmes as often as Liszt's lighter...
on themes from the Mozart opera - 1843: Søren KierkegaardSøren KierkegaardSøren Aabye Kierkegaard was a Danish Christian philosopher, theologian and religious author. He was a critic of idealist intellectuals and philosophers of his time, such as Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling and Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel...
's Either/orEither/OrPublished in two volumes in 1843, Either/Or is an influential book written by the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, exploring the aesthetic and ethical "phases" or "stages" of existence....
in which he discusses MozartWolfgang Amadeus MozartWolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
's musical interpretation of Don GiovanniDon GiovanniDon Giovanni is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and with an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It was premiered by the Prague Italian opera at the Teatro di Praga on October 29, 1787...
, and includes another text which develops a similar character called Johannes ("Diary of a seducer"). - 1844: Nikolaus LenauNikolaus LenauNikolaus Lenau was the nom de plume of Nikolaus Franz Niembsch Edler von Strehlenau , was a German language Austrian poet.-Biography:...
's play Don Juan - 1844: José Zorrilla's play Don Juan TenorioDon Juan TenorioDon Juan Tenorio: Drama religioso-fantástico en dos partes , is a play written in 1844 by José Zorrilla. It is the more romantic of the two principal Spanish-language literary interpretations of the myth of Don Juan...
- 1857: Charles BaudelaireCharles BaudelaireCharles Baudelaire was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the nineteenth century...
's poem Don Juan aux enfers (Don Juan in Hell) in Les Fleurs du MalLes Fleurs du malLes Fleurs du mal is a volume of French poetry by Charles Baudelaire. First published in 1857 , it was important in the symbolist and modernist movements... - 1862: Aleksey Konstantinovich TolstoyAleksey Konstantinovich TolstoyCount Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, often referred to as A. K. Tolstoy , was a Russian poet, novelist and playwright, considered to be the most important nineteenth-century Russian historical dramatist...
's verse drama Don Juan - 1872: Alexander DargomyzhskyAlexander DargomyzhskyAlexander Sergeyevich Dargomyzhsky was a 19th century Russian composer. He bridged the gap in Russian opera composition between Mikhail Glinka and the later generation of The Five and Tchaikovsky....
's opera The Stone GuestThe Stone Guest (Dargomyzhsky)The Stone Guest is an opera in three acts by Alexander Dargomyzhsky. The libretto was taken almost verbatim from Alexander Pushkin's like-named play in blank verse , with slight changes in wording and the interpolation of two songs indicated in the play...
after Puskin - 1874: Guerra JunqueiroGuerra JunqueiroAbilio Manuel Guerra Junqueiro was a Portuguese, bachelor in law at the University of Coimbra, a top civil servant, member of the Portuguese House of Representatives, journalist, author, and poet. His work helped inspire the creation of the Portuguese First Republic...
's poem A morte de D. João - 1878: The Finding of Don Juan by Haidee, painting by Ford Madox BrownFord Madox BrownFord Madox Brown was an English painter of moral and historical subjects, notable for his distinctively graphic and often Hogarthian version of the Pre-Raphaelite style. Arguably, his most notable painting was Work...
- 1883: Paul Heyse's "Don Juans Ende"
- 1888: Richard StraussRichard StraussRichard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; and his tone poems and orchestral works, such as Death and Transfiguration, Till...
' symphonic poem Don JuanDon Juan (Strauss)Don Juan, Op. 20 is a tone poem for large orchestra by the German composer Richard Strauss, written in 1888. The composer conducted its premiere on 11 November 1889 with the orchestra of the Weimar Opera, where he served as Court Kapellmeister.... - 1889: Vernon LeeVernon LeeVernon Lee was the pseudonym of the British writer Violet Paget . She is remembered today primarily for her supernatural fiction and her work on aesthetics. An early follower of Walter Pater, she also wrote over a dozen volumes of essays on art, music, and travel.-Biography:She was born at Château...
's short story 'The Virgin of the Seven Daggers', in which Don Juan raises a Moorish princess from the grave in order to seduce her - 1903: George Bernard ShawGeorge Bernard ShawGeorge Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
's play Man and SupermanMan and SupermanMan and Superman is a four-act drama, written by George Bernard Shaw in 1903. The series was written in response to calls for Shaw to write a play based on the Don Juan theme. Man and Superman opened at The Royal Court Theatre in London on 23 May 1905, but with the omission of the 3rd Act...
; the third act's dream sequence is often played by itself as Don Juan in Hell - 1902–1905: Ramón del Valle-InclánRamón del Valle-InclánRamón María del Valle-Inclán y de la Peña , Spanish dramatist, novelist and member of the Spanish Generation of 98, is considered perhaps the most noteworthy and certainly the most radical dramatist working to subvert the traditionalism of the Spanish...
's Las sonatas - 1906 : Ruperto ChapíRuperto ChapíRuperto Chapí y Lorente was a Spanish composer, and co-founder of the Sociedad General de Autores y Editores.Chapí was born at Villena, the son of a Valencian barber. He trained in his home town and Madrid...
's opera Margarita la torneraMargarita la torneraMargarita la tornera is an opera in three acts composed by Ruperto Chapí to a libretto by Carlos Fernández Shaw, based on a dramatic poem by José Zorrilla...
, based on José Zorrilla's dramatic poem. This features a seducer of women known as Don Juan Alarcon. - 1907: Guillaume ApollinaireGuillaume ApollinaireWilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki, known as Guillaume Apollinaire was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist, and art critic born in Italy to a Polish mother....
's novel Les exploits d'un jeune Don Juan - 1910: Gaston LerouxGaston LerouxGaston Louis Alfred Leroux was a French journalist and author of detective fiction.In the English-speaking world, he is best known for writing the novel The Phantom of the Opera , which has been made into several film and stage productions of the same name, notably the 1925 film starring Lon...
's novel Phantom of the Opera, which includes an opera called Don Juan TriumphantDon Juan TriumphantDon Juan Triumphant is the name of a fictional piece of music written by the title character in the novel The Phantom of the Opera. In the musical adaptation, the concept is expanded as an opera within a musical.-The novel:...
. - 1910–1912: Aleksandr Blok's The Commander's Footsteps (Шаги командора).
- 1912: Lesya UkrainkaLesya UkrainkaLarysa Petrivna Kosach-Kvitka better known under her literary pseudonym Lesya Ukrainka , was one of Ukraine's best-known poets and writers and the foremost woman writer in Ukrainian literature. She also was a political, civil, and female activist....
's Stone Host (Кам'яний господар), a dramatic poem. - 1913: Jacinto GrauJacinto GrauJacinto Grau Delgado was a Spanish playwright associated with the Noucentisme movement....
's play Don Juan de Carillana; also, the play El burlador que no se burla (1927) and the essay Don Juan en el tiempo y en el espacio (1954) - 1921: Edmond RostandEdmond RostandEdmond Eugène Alexis Rostand was a French poet and dramatist. He is associated with neo-romanticism, and is best known for his play Cyrano de Bergerac. Rostand's romantic plays provided an alternative to the naturalistic theatre popular during the late nineteenth century...
's play La dernière nuit de Don Juan - 1922: Azorín's Don Juan
- 1926: Ramón Pérez de AyalaRamón Pérez de AyalaRamón Pérez de Ayala was a Spanish writer. He was the Spanish ambassador to England and voluntarily exiled himself to South America because of the Spanish Civil War .-Background:...
's novel and play Tigre Juan - 1926: Don JuanDon Juan (1926 film)Don Juan is a Warner Brothers film, directed by Alan Crosland. It was the first feature-length film with synchronized Vitaphone sound effects and musical soundtrack, though it has no spoken dialogue...
, starring John BarrymoreJohn BarrymoreJohn Sidney Blyth , better known as John Barrymore, was an acclaimed American actor. He first gained fame as a handsome stage actor in light comedy, then high drama and culminating in groundbreaking portrayals in Shakespearean plays Hamlet and Richard III...
, silent film with VitaphoneVitaphoneVitaphone was a sound film process used on feature films and nearly 1,000 short subjects produced by Warner Bros. and its sister studio First National from 1926 to 1930. Vitaphone was the last, but most successful, of the sound-on-disc processes...
soundtrack. - ?: Serafín and Joaquín Álvarez Quintero's play Don Juan
- 1932: short story Don Juan's Confession in Karel ČapekKarel CapekKarel Čapek was Czech writer of the 20th century.-Biography:Born in 1890 in the Bohemian mountain village of Malé Svatoňovice to an overbearing, emotional mother and a distant yet adored father, Čapek was the youngest of three siblings...
's Apocryphal Tales (Kniha apokryfů) - 1934: Miguel de UnamunoMiguel de UnamunoMiguel de Unamuno y Jugo was a Spanish essayist, novelist, poet, playwright and philosopher.-Biography:...
's Don Juan - 1934: The Private Life of Don JuanThe Private Life of Don JuanThe Private Life of Don Juan is a 1934 British comedy-drama film about the life of an aging Don Juan, based on the 1920 play L'homme à la Rose by Henry Bataille. The movie stars Douglas Fairbanks and Merle Oberon.-Plot:...
, Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.'s last film - 1934–1949: André ObeyAndré ObeyAndré Obey was a prominent French playwright during the inter-war years, and into the 1950s....
: Don Juan - 1936: Ödön von HorváthÖdön von HorváthEdmund Josef von Horváth was a German-writing Austro-Hungarian-born playwright and novelist...
's Don Juan kommt aus dem Krieg (Don Juan comes back from the war) - 1938: Sylvia Townsend WarnerSylvia Townsend WarnerSylvia Nora Townsend Warner was an English novelist and poet.-Life:Sylvia Townsend Warner was born at Harrow on the Hill, the only child of George Townsend Warner and his wife Eleanora Hudleston...
's novel "After the Death of Don Juan" - 1940: Le Mythe de Sisyphe: Albert CamusAlbert CamusAlbert Camus was a French author, journalist, and key philosopher of the 20th century. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement, which was opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton.Camus was awarded the 1957...
. Published by Librarire Gallimard (1942) and by Alfred A. KnopfAlfred A. KnopfAlfred A. Knopf, Inc. is a New York publishing house, founded by Alfred A. Knopf, Sr. in 1915. It was acquired by Random House in 1960 and is now part of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group at Random House. The publishing house is known for its borzoi trademark , which was designed by co-founder...
(1955, 1983) and First Vintage International Editions (1991) in English as The Myth of SisyphusThe Myth of SisyphusThe Myth of Sisyphus is a philosophical essay by Albert Camus. It comprises about 120 pages and was published originally in 1942 in French as Le Mythe de Sisyphe; the English translation by Justin O'Brien followed in 1955....
and other essays. In Camus' anti-suicide treatise, Don Juan is one of three 'Absurd Men', 'heroes' who overcome life with their attitude. - 1942: Paul GoodmanPaul Goodman (writer)Paul Goodman was an American sociologist, poet, writer, anarchist, and public intellectual. Goodman is now mainly remembered as the author of Growing Up Absurd and an activist on the pacifist Left in the 1960s and an inspiration to that era's student movement...
's novel Don Juan or, The Continuum of the Libido, edited by Taylor Stoehr, 1979. - 1942: Franz Zeise's novel Don Juan Tenorio
- 1944: Josef Toman Don Juan
- 1946: Suzanne LilarSuzanne LilarSuzanne, Baroness Lilar was a Flemish Belgian essayist, novelist, and playwright writing in French...
, play "Le Burlador", an original reinterpretation of the myth of Don Juan from the female perspective that revealed a profound capacity for psychological analysis. - 1949: Adventures of Don JuanAdventures of Don JuanAdventures of Don Juan, known in the United Kingdom as The New Adventures of Don Juan, is a 1948 adventure Technicolor romance film made by Warner Bros...
, film starring Errol FlynnErrol FlynnErrol Leslie Flynn was an Australian-born actor. He was known for his romantic swashbuckler roles in Hollywood films, being a legend and his flamboyant lifestyle.-Early life:... - 1950: Don Juan, film directed by José Luis Sáenz de Heredia
- 1952: "A Story of Don Juan", a short ghost story by V.S. Pritchett
- 1953: Max FrischMax FrischMax Rudolf Frisch was a Swiss playwright and novelist, regarded as highly representative of German-language literature after World War II. In his creative works Frisch paid particular attention to issues relating to problems of human identity, individuality, responsibility, morality and political...
's Don Juan oder die Liebe zur Geometrie; also Nachträgliches zu Don Juan - 1954: Ronald Frederick Duncan's play Don Juan
- 1955: Ingmar BergmanIngmar BergmanErnst Ingmar Bergman was a Swedish director, writer and producer for film, stage and television. Described by Woody Allen as "probably the greatest film artist, all things considered, since the invention of the motion picture camera", he is recognized as one of the most accomplished and...
's play Don Juan - 1955: Desi ArnazDesi ArnazDesi Arnaz was a Cuban-born American musician, actor and television producer. While he gained international renown for leading a Latin music band, the Desi Arnaz Orchestra, he is probably best known for his role as Ricky Ricardo on the American TV series I Love Lucy, starring with Lucille Ball, to...
as Ricky RicardoRicky RicardoEnrique Alberto Fernando Ricardo y de Acha, III, a.k.a. Ricky Ricardo is a main character in the television show I Love Lucy, played by Desi Arnaz...
as Don Juan in several episodes (Season 4, Episode #6, #9, #10, #17, #21) of I Love LucyI Love LucyI Love Lucy is an American television sitcom starring Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, Vivian Vance, and William Frawley. The black-and-white series originally ran from October 15, 1951, to May 6, 1957, on the Columbia Broadcasting System...
, the television series. - 1956: Buddy HollyBuddy HollyCharles Hardin Holley , known professionally as Buddy Holly, was an American singer-songwriter and a pioneer of rock and roll...
's song Modern Don Juan - 1957: Georges BatailleGeorges BatailleGeorges Bataille was a French writer. His multifaceted work is linked to the domains of literature, anthropology, philosophy, economy, sociology and history of art...
's novel "Blue of NoonBlue of NoonBlue of Noon is a transgressive novella of erotic fiction written in 1935, and its French author, Georges Bataille was a dedicated anti-fascist, as can be seen from the content of this particular work . Harry Matthews translated it into English in 1978...
", an adaptation of the Don Juan story set in 1930s fascist Europe - 1958: Henry de MontherlantHenry de MontherlantHenry de Montherlant or Henry Marie Joseph Frédéric Expedite Millon de Montherlant was a French essayist, novelist and one of the leading French dramatists of the twentieth century.- Works :...
's play Don Juan - 1959: Roger VaillandRoger VaillandRoger Vailland was a French novelist, essayist, and screenwriter.Vailland's novels include Drôle de jeu , Les mauvais coups , Un jeune homme seul , 325 000 francs , and La loi , winner of the Prix Goncourt...
's play Monsieur Jean - 1960: Ingmar Bergman film Djävulens öga(The Devil's EyeThe Devil's EyeThe Devil's Eye is a 1960 Swedish fantasy-comedy film written and directed by Ingmar Bergman.- Plot :The devil has a stye in his eye, caused by the purity of a vicar's daughter. To get rid of it, he sends Don Juan up from hell to seduce the 20-year-old Britt-Marie and to rob her of her virginity...
) - 1963: Gonzalo Torrente BallesterGonzalo Torrente BallesterGonzalo Torrente Ballester was a Spanish Galician writer in Spanish language. He was born in Serantes, Ferrol, Galicia, and received his first education there, subsequently attending the universities of Santiago de Compostela and Oviedo.Although primarily a novelist, he also published journalism,...
's novel Don Juan - 1967: In the Star Trek Episode from the first season Shore Leave (Star Trek) Yeoman Tonia Barrows is accosted by Don Juan.
- 1969: Jan ŠvankmajerJan ŠvankmajerJan Švankmajer is a Czech filmmaker and artist whose work spans several media. He is a self-labeled surrealist known for his surreal animations and features, which have greatly influenced other artists such as Tim Burton, Terry Gilliam, the Brothers Quay, and many others.- Life and career :Jan...
's Don Šajn (Don Juan); a short retelling of the Don Juan legend featuring live-action, stop-motion animation, and marionettes. - 1969/1970: Donna Juanita, a song performed by Swedish artist Monica ZetterlundMonica ZetterlundEva Monica Zetterlund was a Swedish singer and actress.-Biography:Zetterlund was a singer particularly noted for her jazz work. She began by learning the classic jazz songs from radio and records, initially not knowing the language and what they sang about in English...
, part of the revue and TV-show "Spader, Madame!Spader, Madame!Spader, Madame! is a Swedish variety show that had its première the 10 January 1969 on Oscarsteatern in Stockholm. It was written by Hans Alfredson and Tage Danielsson and directed by Danielsson. Both of the writers starred in the show...
" by comedians HasseåtageHasseåtageHasseåtage is the commonly used name for the popular Swedish comedy-duo featuring Hans "Hasse" Alfredson and Tage Danielsson. The term was created by the Swedish press in the 1960s, and was never used by the duo themselves...
, based on a musical piece by Franz SchubertFranz SchubertFranz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer.Although he died at an early age, Schubert was tremendously prolific. He wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies , liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music...
(Sixth Symphony, Second Movement) - the theme of the lyrics is to show the gender inequality in the fact that Don Juan's philandering behaviour would never have been accepted in a woman - 1970: The Stoned GuestThe Stoned Guest (album)The Stoned Guest is "the premiere recording of the Half-Act Opera by P. D. Q. Bach", the pseudonym used by Peter Schickele for parodic works...
, a half-act opera by P. D. Q. BachP. D. Q. BachP. D. Q. Bach is a fictitious composer invented by musical satirist "Professor" Peter Schickele. In a gag that Schickele has developed over a five-decade-long career, he performs "discovered" works of this forgotten member of the Bach family... - 1973: Don Juan ou Si Don Juan était une femme...Don Juan, or If Don Juan Were a WomanDon Juan, or If Don Juan Were a Woman is a 1973 French-Italian drama film by Roger Vadim. It sees Vadim reunite with his leading lady and ex-wife Brigitte Bardot for their fifth film together...
, a film starring Brigitte BardotBrigitte BardotBrigitte Anne-Marie Bardot is a French former fashion model, actress, singer and animal rights activist. She was one of the best-known sex-symbols of the 1960s.In her early life, Bardot was an aspiring ballet dancer... - 1974: Derek WalcottDerek WalcottDerek Alton Walcott, OBE OCC is a Saint Lucian poet, playwright, writer and visual artist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992 and the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2011 for White Egrets. His works include the Homeric epic Omeros...
's play, The Joker of Seville - 1975: Lars GyllenstenLars GyllenstenLars Johan Wictor Gyllensten was a Swedish author and physician, and a member of the Swedish Academy, which has the aim of furthering the "purity, vigour and majesty" of the Swedish language and selects the recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature each year.Gyllensten was born and grew up in a...
's novel I skuggan av Don Juan (In the shadow of Don Juan) - 1980: New York City no-wave artists MarsMarsMars is the fourth planet from the Sun in the Solar System. The planet is named after the Roman god of war, Mars. It is often described as the "Red Planet", as the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance...
and DNADNADeoxyribonucleic acid is a nucleic acid that contains the genetic instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms . The DNA segments that carry this genetic information are called genes, but other DNA sequences have structural purposes, or are involved in...
recorded a collaborative opera based on Don GiovanniDon GiovanniDon Giovanni is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and with an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It was premiered by the Prague Italian opera at the Teatro di Praga on October 29, 1787...
entitled John GavantiJohn GavantiJohn Gavanti is a 1980 "No Wave opera" album by members of the bands Mars and DNA. It was written and played by Mark Cunningham , Sumner Crane , China Burg , Ikue Mori and Arto Lindsay... - 1983: Carlos Morton's play, Johnny Tenorio
- 1987: In the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical The Phantom Of the OperaThe Phantom of the Opera (1986 musical)The Phantom of the Opera is a musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber, based on the French novel Le Fantôme de l'Opéra by Gaston Leroux.The music was composed by Lloyd Webber, and most lyrics were written by Charles Hart, with additional lyrics by Richard Stilgoe. Alan Jay Lerner was an early collaborator,...
, the Phantom both writes and stars in a fictional opera named Don Juan TriumphantDon Juan TriumphantDon Juan Triumphant is the name of a fictional piece of music written by the title character in the novel The Phantom of the Opera. In the musical adaptation, the concept is expanded as an opera within a musical.-The novel:...
. - 1987: Post-minimalist composer Elodie LautenElodie LautenElodie Lauten is a composer described as postminimalist or a microtonalist.-Biography:Born in Paris, France, Lauten was classically trained as a pianist since age 7. She received a Master's in composition from New York University where she studied Western composition with Dinu Ghezzo and Indian...
wrote an opera based on a feminist variation of the legend entitled "The Death of Don Juan" - 1988: The Pet Shop BoysPet Shop BoysPet Shop Boys are an English electronic dance music duo, consisting of Neil Tennant, who provides main vocals, keyboards and occasional guitar, and Chris Lowe on keyboards....
song "Don Juan", which used the story as a metaphor for the seduction of the BalkansBalkansThe Balkans is a geopolitical and cultural region of southeastern Europe...
by NazismNazismNazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
during the 1930s - 1991: Georges PichardGeorges PichardGeorges Pichard was a French comics artist, known for numerous BD magazine covers, serial publications and albums, stereotypically featuring partially exposed voluptuous women.-Biography:...
's Exploits d'un Don Juan, comic from ApollinaireGuillaume ApollinaireWilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki, known as Guillaume Apollinaire was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist, and art critic born in Italy to a Polish mother....
's novel - 1995: Don Juan DeMarcoDon Juan DeMarcoDon Juan DeMarco is a 1995 American romantic comedy-drama film starring Johnny Depp as John Arnold DeMarco, a man who believes himself to be Don Juan, the greatest lover in the world. Clad in a cape and domino mask, DeMarco undergoes psychiatric treatment with Marlon Brando's character, Dr. Jack...
, film starring Johnny DeppJohnny DeppJohn Christopher "Johnny" Depp II is an American actor, producer and musician. He has won the Golden Globe Award and Screen Actors Guild award for Best Actor. Depp rose to prominence on the 1980s television series 21 Jump Street, becoming a teen idol...
in the role of Don Juan, and also starring Marlon BrandoMarlon BrandoMarlon Brando, Jr. was an American movie star and political activist. "Unchallenged as the most important actor in modern American Cinema" according to the St... - 1997: David IvesDavid IvesDavid Ives is a contemporary American playwright. A native of South Chicago, Ives attended a minor Catholic seminary and Northwestern University and, after some years' interval, Yale School of Drama, where he received an MFA in playwriting...
' comedy Don Juan in Chicago - 2004: Peter HandkePeter HandkePeter Handke is an avant-garde Austrian novelist and playwright.-Early life:Handke and his mother lived in the Soviet-occupied Pankow district of Berlin from 1944 to 1948 before resettling in Griffen...
's novel Don Juan (erzählt von ihm selbst) ("Don Juan (Told by Himself)") - 2005: José SaramagoJosé SaramagoJosé de Sousa Saramago, GColSE was a Nobel-laureate Portuguese novelist, poet, playwright and journalist. His works, some of which can be seen as allegories, commonly present subversive perspectives on historic events, emphasizing the human factor. Harold Bloom has described Saramago as "a...
's play Don Giovanni ou O Dissoluto Absolvido (Don Giovanni or The Dissolute Acquitted). - 2005: Jim JarmuschJim JarmuschJames R. "Jim" Jarmusch is an American independent film director, screenwriter, actor, producer, editor and composer. Jarmusch has been a major proponent of independent cinema, particularly during the 1980s and 1990s.-Early life:...
's film Broken FlowersBroken FlowersBroken Flowers is a 2005 French/American comedy-drama film written and directed by Jim Jarmusch and produced by Jon Kilik and Stacey Smith. The film focuses on an aging "Don Juan" who embarks on a cross-country journey to track down four of his former lovers after receiving an anonymous letter...
. - 2006: Don Juan in SohoDon Juan in SohoDon Juan in Soho is a play by the British playwright Patrick Marber after Molière .Directed by Michael Grandage, it premiered at the Donmar Warehouse theatre in London on 6 December 2006, running until 10 February 2007,...
, a play by Patrick MarberPatrick MarberPatrick Albert Crispin Marber is an English comedian, playwright, director, puppeteer, actor and screenwriter.-Early life and education:... - 2009: Kasper Bech HoltenKasper Bech HoltenKasper Holten is a Danish stage director and Artistic Director of the Royal Danish Opera. He was appointed in 2000, at age 27, succeeding Elaine Padmore, and six years later was still the youngest person running a European opera house.In March 2011 it was announced that, at the end of the...
's film Juan
Both the Flynn and Fairbanks versions turn Don Juan into a likeable rogue, rather than the heartless seducer that he is usually presented as being. The Flynn movie even has him successfully foiling a treasonous plot in the Spanish royal court. Shaw's play turns him into a philosophical character who enjoys contemplating the purpose of life.
Further reading
- Guillaume Apollinaire: Don Juan (1914).
- Michel de Ghelderode: Don Juan (1928).
External links
- Don Juan Archiv Wien (in German)
- Text of Molière's Dom Juan' (in French)
- Encyclopædia Britannica article about Don Juan
- Armand E. Singer: A Bibliography of the Don Juan Theme 1954-2003
- "Juan!...Juaaan!!!" Sample of an alternative Don Juan story
- "Flowers of Evil", Charles Baudelaire