The Don Giovanni Moment

The Don Giovanni Moment is the first book to examine the aesthetic and moral legacy of Mozart's masterpiece in the literature, philosophy, and culture of the nineteenth century. Scholars address Don Giovanni's impact on the philosophical visions of Kierkegaard, Goethe, and Williams and its influence on the literary and dramatic works of Pushkin, Hoffmann, Mörike, Byron, Wagner, Strauss, and Shaw. Through a close and careful analysis of the opera's literary and philosophical reception and its many appropriations, rewritings, and retellings, these contributors treat Don Giovanni as a vantage point from which theory and philosophy can reconsider romanticism's central themes. As lively and passionate as the opera itself, these essays are a spirited contribution to the debate over the meaning, character, and powerful legacy of this remarkable work of art.

Lydia Goehr is professor of philosophy and aesthetics at Columbia University. She is the author of The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music; The Quest for Voice: Music, Politics, and the Limits of Philosophy, and Elective Affinities: Musical Essays on the History of Aesthetic Theory.

Daniel Herwitz is the Mary Fair Croushore Professor of Humanities and director of the Institute for the Humanities at the University of Michigan. He is the author of The Star as Icon: Celebrity in the Age of Mass Consumption, and his short stories have appeared in the Michigan Quarterly Review.