Sent to the Devil (36 page)
Authors: Laura Lebow
I nodded. “Yes, I know that.” But I felt no satisfaction.
“Have you had any word from Miss Cavalli?” he asked.
“No.”
Inside the theater, the audience began to applaud.
Casanova pulled on his cloak. “There will be another woman for you,” he said.
“I want that one.”
We moved outside as the crowds poured out of the theater. Casanova gave me a final embrace. “I hope we will meet again soon,” he said. “Perhaps in Venice!”
“Perhaps,” I said, although I knew it wasn't likely.
Casanova turned and walked toward the Herrengasse. I followed the throng down the Kohlmarkt into the Graben. The night was warm, and people were standing about the large plaza chatting gaily with friends, as they used to do before the war started. I cut through the Stephansplatz. As I passed by the north side of the Stephansdom, I forced myself to look at the spot where Alois had died. I missed him so much. And I longed for Marta.
I took a short street down to the Wollzeile, and joined the crowd of people headed toward the Stuben gate. Perhaps Casanova was right. Life would be better. Soon I might look back at my experiences and feel content. But for now, I just felt numb and empty, all alone in a dark place.
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By 1788, when
Don Giovanni
premiered in Vienna, Emperor Joseph II and his supporters had grown disillusioned with the results of his aggressive program of enlightened reform. They had believed that allowing a free press, breaking down class barriers, modernizing education, and eliminating medieval superstitions from religious practice would create a new kind of society, one in which reasoned debate was the common currency and in which individuals took action only after considering the public good. Instead, a materialistic culture arose, in which everyone pursued their own interests and desires.
Joseph reacted to this turn of events by reasserting his autocratic authority. He reinstated censorship of the press and revoked many of his reforms. As dissent and unrest continued to grow both in Austria and its far-flung territories, he created a secret police force to protect the state from threats.
Into this political setting came Mozart and Da Ponte's
Don Giovanni,
full of ambiguities about morality, judgment, religion, and societal control of the individual. Is Giovanni a hero or villain? After he accepts the stone guest's invitation, the rest of the cast sings that those who do evil always come to an evil end. But what exactly are the crimes he has committed? Opera lovers, writers, and analysts are still debating these questions today.
The embodiment of the libertine in the eighteenth century was Giacomo Casanovaâwriter, adventurer, entrepreneur, spyâwho was famous throughout Europe for his escape from the prison in the doge's palace in Venice in 1756. He became friends with Lorenzo Da Ponte in 1777, when the two met at the Venetian home of Count Pietro Zaguri, for whom Da Ponte worked as secretary. The two men corresponded with one another and met several times during their twenty-one-year friendship.
My decision to use Casanova as Da Ponte's confidant in this book was prompted by a historical mystery surrounding him and the composition of
Don Giovanni.
In the early twentieth century, draft verses of a replacement scene for the opera were found among Casanova's papers in Dux. It is not known whether he wrote the scene for his own amusement, or at Mozart's request (Da Ponte having been recalled to Vienna before the Prague premiere). In fact, we do not know if Casanova was even acquainted with Mozart. But many scholars believe that he attended at least one of the performances of
Don Giovanni
in Prague in the fall of 1787. He was not, however, present in Vienna in the spring of 1788; I placed him there for my own purposes.
As Da Ponte mentions in the epilogue,
Don Giovanni
enjoyed a modest success in Vienna. It was repeated fourteen times during 1788, and then was not produced there again in its original Italian until 1798. It became popular among writers in the nineteenth century, who seized upon the don as a romantic hero rebelling against an oppressive society. Today, of course, it is a staple of theaters around the world, most of which perform a pastiche of the Prague and Vienna versions, including
both
tenor arias and the
scena
Da Ponte and Mozart created for Caterina Cavalieri. The burlesque scene Da Ponte and Mozart wrote for Vienna is seldom performed today, but can be found on some recordings, most notably John Eliot Gardiner's 1994 Archiv production.
Many of the settings in the novel may be visited by a traveler to Vienna. Ludwig Dehne's pastry shop continued in business on the Michaelerplatz until 1857, when the founder's grandson sold it to his assistant, Christoph Demel, who changed the name of the shop to his own. In 1888, when the court theater was torn down, his sons moved the shop around the corner to the Kohlmarkt, where it remains today as a popular destination for tourists and locals.
The Belvedere palaces were built for Prince Eugene of Savoy, the great military hero of the war against the Turks in 1683. Empress Maria Theresa acquired the property from his heirs in 1752. In 1781, the palaces were used to house the Imperial Picture Gallery, which was open to the public, as were the expansive gardens. Both palaces remain art museums today; the upper palace contains the world's largest collection of paintings by Gustav Klimt.
The Habsburg imperial crypt in the Capuchin Church on the Neuer Market has been expanded substantially since the eighteenth century. The crypt contains both beautiful and spooky examples of funerary art. Joseph II's tomb there says more about his character than any biographyâa simple casket resting at the foot of the grandiose monument his mother, Maria Theresa, had ordered designed for herself and her husband.
Historians are not certain where Da Ponte lived while writing
Don Giovanni.
It is likely that he resided within the city walls, as he did when working on
The Marriage of Figaro
. I moved him out to the suburbs.
Mozart and Constanze, on the other hand, did live in the cramped apartment on the Tuchlauben in the spring of 1788. On June 17, they moved out to the Alsergrund suburb, where they rented a large apartment with a garden. Mozart assumed the war would be brief, and looked forward to spending the summer writing in expectation of a larger role as court composer once the emperor returned. It was here that he wrote the first of his series of letters to his fellow lodge member Michael Puchberg, asking for a large loan to defray his expenses until his fortunes improved. It was also here that baby Theresa died on June 29.
Valentin von Gerl's art collection contains several important eighteenth-century paintings, links to which can be seen at my Web site:
www.lauralebowbooks.com
. The watermark that plays such a large role in Da Ponte's investigation comes from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson in 1787. The document now resides at the Library of Congress. A link to it can also be found on my Web site, as can a list of sources I consulted while writing this book.
*Â Â Â *Â Â Â *
I am indebted to the following people for their guidance, encouragement, and support: my agent, John Talbot; Keith Kahla and Hannah Braaten at Minotaur Books; and Bill Lebow, my tireless champion and cheerleader.
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LAURA LEBOW
studied European history at Brandeis University and earned a master's in city planning from MIT. After a career as an environmental policy analyst, she now writes historical mysteries full-time. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband and an ever-expanding collection of opera CDs.
The Figaro Murders
was the first book in the Da Ponte mystery series. You can sign up for email updates
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CONTENTS