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