Don Giovanni, Lorenzo Da Ponte, and the Unforgivable Sin

During Lent, I usually attempt to limit my consumption of secular entertainment and shift over to works with more overt Catholic themes. With this in mind, I noticed a video pop up on my YouTube feed of a work that had long been familiar to me, but that I had never troubled myself to watch in its entirety. This was a production of Mozart’s great opera, Don Giovanni. Full disclosure: I’m not a huge fan of opera generally, select Gilbert and Sullivan works notwithstanding. Some of the extended Prima Donna arias can really get under my skin. In the case...