In this old legend the worldly and the supernatural pass most naturally into one another. Don Juan, gifted with all the physical and intellectual attributes of power, urged by aspirations blind but uncontainable, full of the feeling of _life_, and resolved to LIVE, if possible, so fully as to fill all with himself and never own a limit, (and this is only a perversion of the true desire to live in harmony _with_ all,) finds the tempting shadow of this satisfaction in the love of woman, and the poor bird flutters charmed and trembling toward his fascinating glance. Imagine now the elegant, full-blooded, rich, accomplished and seductive gallant on his restless rout of pleasures and intrigues. At his side his faithful knave, droll Leporello, expostulating with his master very piously sometimes, yet bound to him by potent magnetism, both of metal and of character (for passion like Giovanni’s _will_ be served.) Leporello is the foil and shadow to his master, and adds to the zest of his life-long intoxication by the blending of the comic with this exquisite wild fever of the blood. Throughout the whole he plays the part of contrast and brings all back to reality and earth again, lest the history should take too serious possession of us. He is the make-weight of common sense tossed into the lighter scale. He justifies its original title of “Don Giovanni, _un drama giocoso_;” for this opera is tragedy and comedy and what you please, the same heterogeneous yet harmonious compound that life itself is. He on the one side gives a dash of charlatanry to Don Juan, just as on the other side he borders on the supernatural. Mark the poetic balance and completeness here: this passion-life of Don Juan has its outward and its inward comment: on the one side Leporello, on the other the supernatural statue and the bodily influx of hell. On the one side it is comic, grotesque and absurd; on the other, it is fearful. Seen in one light he is a charlatan, a splendid joke; seen in the other, he is an unfolding demon and a type of doom; while in his life he is but the free development of human passion in human circumstances. Man always walks between these two mirrors! One shows his shadow, as of destiny, projected, ever-widening, into the Infinite, where it grows vague and fearful. The other takes him in the act, and literally pins down all his high strivings and pretensions to such mere matter of fact, that he becomes ridiculous. * * * * * We come now to the Opera itself, which we can only examine very briefly and unequally, touching here and there. Were we to set about it thoroughly, our article would soon overflow all magazine bounds, since there is not a scene, an air, a bit of recitative, from the beginning to the end, that would not challenge our most critical appreciation.