[XIII 449] * This is why Leporello and Zerlina would be able to talk together very well
[XIII 449] * This is why Leporello and Zerlina would be able to talk together very well if he were to say to her of Don Giovanni what he said to Elvira in the old days74 and what shocked her most of all: “Yes, oh, yes, how strange! Here today, gone tomorrow.” And then Zerlina would say: “Isn’t it true what I say—that no one knows at all how it happens.”
[XIII 450] ** In that case the structure is altered: what is so profound and so Greek,75 that Don Giovanni stumbles over a straw, over a little Zerlina, while he falls beneath entirely different forces. The total effect and total unity are disturbed. Anna’s passion, the murder of the Commendatore, the reunion with Elvira, everything goes against Don Giovanni; he is on the point of being stopped, and for the first time in his life he gasps for breath. All this happens so early, in the first two scenes, so the opera is still just beginning. What kind of seduction is this supposed to be that takes place in the opera? There are two alternatives: either a seduction so difficult and dangerous that the incitement of tension fans his most intense desire and utmost energy (which, however, will weaken the effect and is weakened by the effect of Anna and Elvira) or the seduction of a sweet little peasant girl with a natural archness and childlikeness, a feminine manifestation that is found only approximately in the north and for which the Catholic Church has a mixed category. Don Giovanni is certainly in his element, but the effect of the others in the opera is not diminished. This is Mozart’s idea, and in the idea the piece has its beautiful unity and Mozart his felicitous task. Don Giovanni and Zerlina are related spontaneously to each other as a natural force to a condition of nature, a purely musical relation.