The Nature of Musical Love in Mozart's Operas

In three of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's operas - The Marriage of Figaro, Cosi Fan Tutte, and Don Giovanni - the question of love is at hand. From teenagers to adults, the seemingly simple question "What is love?" is constantly asked and always goes without one definite answer. Yet, Mozart uses the universal language of music to provide the audience with possibly the closest answer to what love is and what love is not. Through several different characters and melodies, Mozart displays how music is the strongest form of communication and expression. In the three aforementioned operas, Mozart uses several different musical variations and techniques to distinguish different types of love, from the uniting of two people truly in love to the expression of romantic interest in another, from the new experience of love to fickle love and unrequited love.

In Mozart's dramma giocoso, Don Giovanni, a main character on which the question love is placed is Donna Elvira: how is she perceived? When she is introduced in Act I, she enters in an aria, but aside. Immediately, the audience hears her peculiar way of love - or is it love? The music for her aria begins with rising three-note slurs (two sixteenth-notes and a quarter-note ending on a downbeat), which continues only for four measures. After the three-note slurs sequence three times, they drop again to rise again in the same way. For these four measures of rising and falling, the violins are imitating Donna Elvira's frantic and worried breathing patterns: rushing, somewhat quick, rising, and a dropping exhale only to rise again. This three-note slur pattern recurs only one more time, right before Donna Elvira begins singing. After the three-note slur pattern, the violins suddenly rush through sixteenth-notes: it is Donna Elvira's heart racing, pattering away for Don Giovanni. When the second violins slur through outlined sixteenth-note triads, it is Donna Elvira again, except this time they are butterflies in her stomach. For whom? For Don Giovanni.