| Sumario: | In the year following its 1787 Prague première, <I>Don Giovanni</I> was performed in Vienna. Everyone, according to the well-known account by Da Ponte, thought something was wrong with it. In response, Mozart made changes, producing a Vienna 'version' of the opera, cutting two of the original arias but inserting three newly-composed pieces. The dilemma faced by musicians and scholars ever since has been whether to preserve the opera in these two 'authentic' forms, or whether to fashion a hybrid text incorporating the best of both. <BR> This study presents new evidence about the Vienna form of the opera, based on the examination of late eighteenth-century manuscript copies. The Prague Conservatory score is identified as the primary exemplar for the Viennese dissemination of <I>Don Giovanni</I>, which is shown to incorporate two quite distinct versions, represented by the performing materials in Vienna [O.A.361] and the early Lausch commercial copy in Florence. To account for this phenomenon, seen also in early sources of the Prague <I>Don Giovanni</I> and <I>Cosìfan tutte</I>, a general theory of transmission for the Mozart Da Ponte operas is proposed, which clarifies the relationship between the fluid text produced by re-creation (performing) and the static text generated by replication (copying). Aspects of the compositional history of <I>Don Giovanni</I> are uncovered. Evidence to suggest that Mozart first considered an order in which Donna Elvira's <I>scena</I> precedes the comic duet 'Per queste tue manine' is assessed. The essential truth of Da Ponte's account - that the revision of the opera in Vienna was an interactive process, involving the views of performers, the reactions of audiences and the composer's responses - seems to be fully borne out. The final part of the study investigates the late eighteenth-century transmission of <I>Don Giovanni</I>. The idea that hybrid versions gained currency only in the nineteenth century or in the lighter <I>Singspiel</I> tradition is challenged. <BR><BR> IAN WOODFIELD is Professor and Director of Research at the School of Music and Sonic Arts, Queen's University Belfast.
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