How can this music, so full of force, majesty, and grandeur, be expected to please the lovers of ordinary opera, who bring their ears to the theatre with them, but leave their hearts at home? The grand and noble qualities of the music in "Don Juan" will appeal only to the small minority of the elect. It is not such as to tickle the ear of the crowd, and leave the heart unsatisfied. Mozart is no ordinary composer. His music has been profoundly felt and thought out in its relation to the characters, situations, and sentiments of his personages. It is a study in language, treated musically. He never decks out his songs with unnecessary and meaningless passages. That is the way in which expression is banished from music: expression consisting not in particular words, but in the skilful and natural combination of sounds as a medium of real emotion. Of this method of expression Mozart is a consummate master. Each sound which he produces has its origin in emotion, and overflows with it. His expression is glowing with life and picturesqueness, yet without the taint of voluptuousness. He has the richest, and at the same time the most temperate imagination. He is a true virtuoso, never allowing his creative impulse to run away with his judgment; his inspiration is guided by reason, his impersonations are the result of calm deliberation.[41] {DON GIOVANNI.} (140) The Berlin criticism was not quite so favourable, the opera having been there performed for the first time in the presence of the King on December 20, 1790:[42]-- If ever an opera was looked forward to with curiosity, if ever a composition of Mozart's was lauded to the skies before its performance, it was surely this "Don Juan." Every one will allow that Mozart is a great and admirable composer, but that nothing good or great has been written before this opera, or will be written after it, is a point on which we may be allowed to doubt. Theatrical music admits of no rules, of no appeal but to the heart, and its worth is in proportion to its effect thereon. No amount of art in heaping up instrumental effects will make a great musician or render his name immortal, unless he can give utterance to the passions and emotions of the heart. Grétry, Monsigny, and Philidor are instances to the point. Mozart has aimed at writing something extraordinary, something inimitably grand in his "Don Juan"; the extraordinary is there, certainly, but not the inimitably grand. Vanity, eccentricity, fancy, have created "Don Juan," not the heart; and we should have preferred being called upon to admire the highest capabilities of music in one of his oratorios or solemn church compositions than in his "Don Juan."[43]