Don Giovanni and the power of a really good "bad guy"

Last weekend I had the absolute privilege of seeing the London Royal Opera House's latest production of Mozart's Don Giovanni. Now, I am not an opera buff but I do enjoy the music, the theatre and I especially enjoy Don Giovanni. 

Don Giovanni is based on the legendary Don Juan, a fictional seducer of women and all round cad. The opera opens with Don Giovanni's long suffering servant Leporello waiting outside a house whilst his master attempts to rape the lovely Donna Anna. He fails in this endeavour but succeeds in murdering her aging father, the Commendatore as he rushes to his daughter's aid. Other characters include Zerlina, a peasant girl who comes perilously close to falling for Giovanni's charms, her new husband Masetto, and Donna Elvira a noblewoman besotted and betrayed by Giovanni. This motley crew make it their mission to expose and bring Giovanni to justic for his crimes and the opera ends with the ghost of the murdered Commendatore appearing before a defiant Giovanni to drag him into hell.

I've seen this opera three times now. The last production I saw was by Opera Up Close where the story was updated and Giovanni was that most modern of villains, a London banker. The production at the ROH is more classical but Gerald Finley's Giovanni was no less wicked and no less seductive.

Gerald Finley as Don Giovanni at the ROH

What I love about this opera, and this story is the character of Giovanni himself. He is a sexual predator and a cold-hearted murderer. In short, he is a total git. But my word how the audience love him! Most of the comedy in the opera comes from Giovanni's exploits. We giggle as in one song Leporello tells us that he keeps a catalogue of women Giovanni has bedded by force or otherwise, 640 in Italy, 231 in Germany, 100 in France, 91 in Turker and in Spain 1003. We smile as he plans a party so drunken that he expects to bed at least ten women. It's funny when he is stalked around the stage by Elvira who plays the part of the obsessive ex-girlfriend who turns up to scupper his fun, but we secretly hope that he will find a way to carry out his mischief. In the Royal Opera House production I saw, a final tableau showing a jubilant Giovanni with a half naked young woman in his arms in hell, extracted impromtu cheers from the audience.

It is often said that those that take revenge are left empty once that revenge is exacted. The remaining characters discuss their future plans in the last scene of the opera, sounding almost bored and disappointed that their all-encompassing quest for vengeance against Giovanni is over. It's a horrible anti-climax after the fire and drama of the ghostly Commendatore and the cries of Giovanni as he is dragged into the inferno. Something is missing from that final scene, it's a happy ending sure - but it's boring. For what are they to do now that he is gone? Where is the spark, where is the excitement? Where is the point?

A really good "bad guy" makes a story fly. Bad guys give stories the fire, the tension, the thrill that just wouldn't be there otherwise. A bad "bad guy" can just leave a story flat and emotionless as my apoplectic review of Twilight showed. If your bad guy sucks, then your story sucks.

The wonderful poet Lord Byron encapsulated the anti-hero within life and poetry (one of his epic poems was of course Don Juan, although his was a gentler version of the seducer). Although the opera was written and premiered a year before Byron's birth, Giovanni captures the essence of the flawed hero that later came to inhabit the poetry of Byron. He is the arrogant and unapologetic disrupter of the social norm but he is also seductively attractive. A really good "bad guy" can reach a cult status just not touchable for your standard hero. Some of the other characters that join the upper escehelons of evil as truly good "bad guys" are Freddy Krueger (before he became a comedy figure), Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights, Randall Flagg from Stephen King's "The Stand", "American Psycho" Patrick Bateman, Snape from the Harry Potter series, the demon Crowley from Supernatural and Dracula.

That's why this opera fascinates me. It shines a light on that little part of all our psyches that makes us root for the bad guy. For a world without wickedness is just plain dull. As Eminem says,  it would feel "so empty without me".