Il convitato di pietra

Il convitato di pietra is an opera of 1776 performed in Prague, the second of a series of three notable operas based on the Don Juan legend that were performed there for the first time in the 18th century (the others being the pastiche La pravità castigata of 1730 and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Don Giovanni of 1787). The full title of the opera, Il convitato di pietra, ossia il dissoluto, can be translated as "the stone guest, or the debauchee". The title is derived from the prototype Italian Don Juan spoken drama, Giacinto Andrea Cicognini's Il convitato di pietra of ca. 1632, which is based on Tirso de Molina's drama El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra ("the trickster of Seville and the stone guest") of ca. 1620. The libretto for the 1776 opera was written by Nunziato Porta with music by Vincenzo Righini. Porta chose the designation "dramma tragicomico" for the work to draw attention to a mix of serious and comic action. The most important literary model that Porta's libretto makes reference to is Carlo Goldoni's play Don Giovanni Tenorio of 1736, but its libretto was also prepared with at least some reference to La pravità castigata of 1730. It appears to have initiated a series of new Don Juan operas that appeared in Europe between 1777 and 1787.

Text from the Wikipedia article "Il convitato di pietra (Righini)", licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.