Ballet d'action is a ballet movement started by French choreographer Jean Georges Noverre in 1760. It involves expression of character and emotion through dancers' bodies and faces, rather than through elaborate costumes and props. The movement began due to Noverre's negative reaction to what he considered the dancers' undue focus on technical expertise and neglect of the true purpose of ballet.

History[link]

In his book Lettres sur la danse et les ballets, Noverre asserted that the purpose of ballet is to "to represent characters and express their feelings" [1]. He advocated a move away from the use of bulky costumes to express character; instead, he stated that only the dancers' movements should matter. It was toward this end that Noverre developed ballet d'action.

Some dance historians maintain that earlier choreographers developed ballets in the ballet d'action style [2] even though Noverre is widely recognized as the principal innovator of the movement.

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Don Juan in Mozart's opera Don Giovanni, a painting by Max Slevogt

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Don Juan (Spanish, or "Don Giovanni" in Italian) is a legendary, fictional libertine whose story has been told many times by many authors. El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra (The Trickster of Seville and the Stone Guest) by Tirso de Molina is a play set in the fourteenth century that was published in Spain around 1630. Evidence suggests it is the first written version of the Don Juan legend. Among the best known works about this character today are Molière's play Dom Juan ou le Festin de pierre (1665), Byron's epic poem Don Juan (1821), José de Espronceda's poem El estudiante de Salamanca (1840) and José Zorrilla's play Don Juan Tenorio (1844). Along with Zorrilla's work (still performed every year on November 2nd throughout the Spanish-speaking world), arguably the best known version is Don Giovanni, an opera composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart with libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte, first performed in Prague in 1787 (with Giacomo Casanova probably in the audience) and itself the source of inspiration for works by E. T. A. Hoffmann, Alexander Pushkin, Søren Kierkegaard, George Bernard Shaw and Albert Camus.

Don Juan is used synonymously for "womanizer", especially in Spanish slang, and the term Don Juanism is sometimes used as a synonym for satyriasis.

Don Juan legend[link]

Although the various iterations of the Don Juan myth show some variation, the basic storyline remains the same. Starting with Tirso's work, Don Juan is portrayed as a wealthy, seductive libertine who devotes his life to seducing women, taking great pride in his ability to seduce women of all ages and stations in life. His life is also punctuated with violence and gambling, and in many interpretations (Tirso, Espronceda, Zorrilla), he kills Don Gonzalo, the father of a girl he has seduced, Doña Ines. This leads to the famous last supper scene, whereby Don Juan invites the dead father to dinner. The ending depends on which version of the legend one is reading. Tirso's original play was meant as religious parable against Don Juan's sinful ways, and ends with his death, having been denied salvation by God. Other authors and playwrights would interpret the ending in their own fashion. Espronceda's Don Felix walks into hell and to his death of his own volition, whereas Zorrilla's Don Juan asks for, and receives, a divine pardon. The figure of Don Juan has inspired many modern interpretations.

Pronunciation[link]

In Castilian Spanish, Don Juan is pronounced [doŋˈxwan]. The usual English pronunciation is /ˌdɒnˈwɑːn/, with two syllables and a silent "J". However, in Byron's epic poem it rhymes with ruin and true one, indicating that it was intended to have the trisyllabic spelling pronunciation /ˌdɒnˈdʒuːən/. This would have been characteristic of his English literary predecessors who often deliberately imposed partisan English pronunciations on Spanish names, such as Don Quixote /ˌdɒnˈkwɪksət/.

Chronology of works derived from the story of Don Juan[link]

This section may contain excessive, poor or irrelevant examples. You can improve the article by adding more descriptive text and removing less pertinent examples. See Wikipedia's guide to writing better articles for further suggestions. (May 2010)

Seventeenth century[link]

• 1630: Tirso de Molina's play El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra
• 1643: Paolo Zehentner's play Promontorium Malae Spei
• 1650: Giacinto Andrea Cicognini's play Il convitato di pietra
• 1658: Dorimon (Nicolas Drouin's) Le festin de pierre, ou le fils criminel
• 1659: Jean Deschamps, Sieur de Villiers's play Le Festin de Pierre ou le Fils criminel
• 1665: Molière's comedy Dom Juan ou le Festin de pierre
• 1669: Rosimon's Festin de pierre, ou l’athée foudroyé
• 1676: Thomas Shadwell's play The Libertine
• 17th century: L'ateista fulminato, Italian play by unknown author

Eighteenth century[link]

• 1714?: Antonio de Zamora's play No hay plazo que no se cumpla ni deuda que no se pague o convidado de piedra^[1]
• 1730: Antonio Denzio's opera La pravità castigata, with music mainly by Antonio Caldara
• 1736: Carlo Goldoni's play Don Giovanni Tenorio ossia Il dissoluto
• 1761: Christoph Willibald Gluck's and Gasparo Angiolini's ballet Don Juan
• 1776: Vincenzo Righini's opera Il convitato di pietra
• 1787: Giovanni Bertati's opera Don Giovanni, music by Giuseppe Gazzaniga
• 1787: Lorenzo da Ponte's opera Don Giovanni, music by Mozart

Nineteenth century[link]

• 1813: E.T.A. Hoffmann's novella Don Juan (later collected in Fantasiestücke in Callots Manier)
• 1821: Byron's epic poem Don Juan
• 1829: Christian Dietrich Grabbe's play Don Juan und Faust
• 1830: Pushkin's play Каменный гость (Kamenny Gost', The Stone Guest) set as an opera in 1872
• 1831: Alexandre Dumas' play Don Juan de Maraña
• 1831: Balzac's short story L'Élixir de longue vie (The Elixir of Life)
• 1834: Prosper Mérimée's novella Les âmes du Purgatoire
• 1840: José de Espronceda's El estudiante de Salamanca
• 1841: Franz Liszt's Réminiscences de Don Juan on themes from the Mozart opera
• 1843: Søren Kierkegaard's Either/or in which he discusses Mozart's musical interpretation of Don Giovanni, and includes another text which develops a similar character called Johannes ("Diary of a seducer").
• 1844: Nikolaus Lenau's play Don Juan
• 1844: José Zorrilla's play Don Juan Tenorio
• 1857: Charles Baudelaire's poem Don Juan aux enfers (Don Juan in Hell) in Les Fleurs du Mal
• 1862: Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy's verse drama Don Juan
• 1872: Alexander Dargomyzhsky's opera The Stone Guest after Puskin
• 1874: Guerra Junqueiro's poem A morte de D. João
• 1878: The Finding of Don Juan by Haidee, painting by Ford Madox Brown
• 1883: Paul Heyse's "Don Juans Ende"
• 1888: Richard Strauss' symphonic poem Don Juan
• 1889: Vernon Lee's short story 'The Virgin of the Seven Daggers', in which Don Juan raises a Moorish princess from the grave in order to seduce her

Twentieth century[link]

• 1903: George Bernard Shaw's play Man and Superman; the third act's dream sequence is often played by itself as Don Juan in Hell
• 1902–1905: Ramón del Valle-Inclán's Las sonatas
• 1906 : Ruperto Chapí's opera Margarita la tornera, based on José Zorrilla's dramatic poem. This features a seducer of women known as Don Juan Alarcon.
• 1907: Guillaume Apollinaire's novel Les exploits d'un jeune Don Juan
• 1910: Gaston Leroux's novel Phantom of the Opera, which includes an opera called Don Juan Triumphant.
• 1910–1912: Aleksandr Blok's The Commander's Footsteps (Шаги командора).
• 1912: Lesya Ukrainka's Stone Host (Кам'яний господар), a dramatic poem.
• 1913: Jacinto Grau's play Don Juan de Carillana; also, the play El burlador que no se burla (1927) and the essay Don Juan en el tiempo y en el espacio (1954)
• 1921: Edmond Rostand's play La dernière nuit de Don Juan
• 1922: Azorín's Don Juan
• 1926: Ramón Pérez de Ayala's novel and play Tigre Juan
• 1926: Don Juan, starring John Barrymore, silent film with Vitaphone soundtrack.
•  ?: Serafín and Joaquín Álvarez Quintero's play Don Juan
• 1928: Don Juan in der Mädchenschule, directed by Reinhold Schünzel, starring Ernst Behmer, Adolphe Engers and Carl Geppert
• 1932: short story Don Juan's Confession in Karel Čapek's Apocryphal Tales (Kniha apokryfů)^[2]
• 1934: Miguel de Unamuno's Don Juan
• 1934: The Private Life of Don Juan, Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.'s last film
• 1934–1949: André Obey: Don Juan
• 1936: Ödön von Horváth's Don Juan kommt aus dem Krieg (Don Juan comes back from the war)
• 1938: Sylvia Townsend Warner's novel "After the Death of Don Juan"
• 1940: Le Mythe de Sisyphe: Albert Camus. Published by Librarire Gallimard (1942) and by Alfred A. Knopf (1955, 1983) and First Vintage International Editions (1991) in English as The Myth of Sisyphus and other essays. In Camus' anti-suicide treatise, Don Juan is one of three 'Absurd Men', 'heroes' who overcome life with their attitude.
• 1942: Paul Goodman's novel Don Juan or, The Continuum of the Libido, edited by Taylor Stoehr, 1979.
• 1942: Franz Zeise's novel Don Juan Tenorio
• 1944: Josef Toman Don Juan
• 1946: Suzanne Lilar, play "Le Burlador", an original reinterpretation of the myth of Don Juan from the female perspective that revealed a profound capacity for psychological analysis.
• 1949: Adventures of Don Juan, film starring Errol Flynn
• 1950: Don Juan, film directed by José Luis Sáenz de Heredia
• 1952: "A Story of Don Juan", a short ghost story by V.S. Pritchett
• 1953: Max Frisch's Don Juan oder die Liebe zur Geometrie; also Nachträgliches zu Don Juan
• 1954: Ronald Frederick Duncan's play Don Juan
• 1955: Ingmar Bergman's play Don Juan
• 1955: Desi Arnaz as Ricky Ricardo as Don Juan in several episodes (Season 4, Episode #6, #9, #10, #17, #21) of I Love Lucy, the television series.
• 1956: Buddy Holly's song Modern Don Juan
• 1957: Georges Bataille's novel "Blue of Noon", an adaptation of the Don Juan story set in 1930s fascist Europe
• 1958: Henry de Montherlant's play Don Juan
• 1959: Roger Vailland's play Monsieur Jean
• 1960: Ingmar Bergman film Djävulens öga(The Devil's Eye)
• 1963: Gonzalo Torrente Ballester's novel Don Juan
• 1967: In the Star Trek Episode from the first season Shore_Leave_(Star_Trek) Yeoman Tonia Barrows is accosted by Don Juan.
• 1969: Jan Švankmajer's Don Šajn (Don Juan); a short retelling of the Don Juan legend featuring live-action, stop-motion animation, and marionettes.
• 1969/1970: Donna Juanita, a song performed by Swedish artist Monica Zetterlund, part of the revue and TV-show "Spader, Madame!" by comedians Hasseåtage, based on a musical piece by Franz Schubert (Sixth Symphony, Second Movement) - the theme of the lyrics is to show the gender inequality in the fact that Don Juan's philandering behaviour would never have been accepted in a woman
• 1970: The Stoned Guest, a half-act opera by P. D. Q. Bach
• 1973: Don Juan ou Si Don Juan était une femme..., a film starring Brigitte Bardot
• 1974: Derek Walcott's play, The Joker of Seville
• 1975: Lars Gyllensten's novel I skuggan av Don Juan (In the shadow of Don Juan)
• 1980: New York City no-wave artists Mars and DNA recorded a collaborative opera based on Don Giovanni entitled John Gavanti
• 1983: Carlos Morton's play, Johnny Tenorio
• 1987: In the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical The Phantom Of the Opera, the Phantom both writes and stars in a fictional opera named Don Juan Triumphant.
• 1987: Post-minimalist composer Elodie Lauten wrote an opera based on a feminist variation of the legend entitled "The Death of Don Juan"
• 1988: The Pet Shop Boys song "Don Juan", which used the story as a metaphor for the seduction of the Balkans by Nazism during the 1930s
• 1991: Georges Pichard's Exploits d'un Don Juan, comic from Apollinaire's novel
• 1995: Don Juan DeMarco, film starring Johnny Depp in the role of Don Juan, and also starring Marlon Brando
• 1997: David Ives' comedy Don Juan in Chicago

Twenty-first century[link]

• 2003: Félix Gray's musical comedy Don Juan
• 2004: Peter Handke's novel Don Juan (erzählt von ihm selbst) ("Don Juan (Told by Himself)")
• 2005: José Saramago's play Don Giovanni ou O Dissoluto Absolvido (Don Giovanni or The Dissolute Acquitted).
• 2005: Jim Jarmusch's film Broken Flowers.
• 2006: Don Juan in Soho, a play by Patrick Marber
• 2009: Kasper Bech Holten's film Juan

Both the Flynn and Fairbanks versions turn Don Juan into a likeable rogue, rather than the heartless seducer that he is usually presented as being. The Flynn movie even has him successfully foiling a treasonous plot in the Spanish royal court. Shaw's play turns him into a philosophical character who enjoys contemplating the purpose of life.

References[link]

1. ^ http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_de_Zamora
2. ^ Apocryphal Tales, Karel Čapek.

Further reading[link]

• Macchia, Giovanni (1995) [1991] (in Italian). Vita avventure e morte di Don Giovanni. Milano: Adelphi. ISBN 88-459-0826-7. 
• Said Armesto, Víctor (1968) [1946] (in Spanish). La leyenda de Don Juan. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe. 
• Guillaume Apollinaire: Don Juan (1914).
• Michel de Ghelderode: Don Juan (1928).

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Don Juan

• Don Juan Archiv Wien (in German)
• Text of Molière's Dom Juan' (in French)
• Encyclopædia Britannica article about Don Juan
• Armand E. Singer: A Bibliography of the Don Juan Theme 1954-2003
• "Juan!...Juaaan!!!" Sample of an alternative Don Juan story
• "Flowers of Evil", Charles Baudelaire