"Don Giovanni."[70] At the conclusion of the first finale everything went wrong; Garcia, who was playing Don Giovanni, exerted himself in vain to keep the singers and orchestra in time and tune, until at last, sword in hand, he came forward and, commanding silence, exclaimed that it was a shame so to murder a masterpiece. They began again, collected themselves and took pains, and the finale came happily to an end.[71] The applause of the public renewed Da Ponte's youth; he recounts the satisfaction with which he heard the assurance of a friend, whose custom it was to go regularly to sleep at the opera, that such an opera as that would keep him awake all night.[72] "Don Giovanni" brought him still further good fortune; he placed his unexpectedly large profits obtained therefrom in the lottery, and for the first time drew a prize.[73] "Don Giovanni," once having made its way, was soon unanimously pronounced first among all, Mozart's operas; he was said to have declared that he wrote {THE LIBRETTO.} (145) it not at all for Vienna, a little for Prague, but mostly for himself and his friends.[74] It is true that the libretto was formerly considered as a bungling fabrication only tolerated for the sake of the music; nevertheless, and especially after Hoffmann's clever vindication of its poetical meaning,[75] "Don Giovanni" gradually became the accepted canon of dramatic music, and the subject of wide-reaching discussion.[76] In "Figaro" Da Ponte had opened a new field to opera buffa, by representing the actual life of _bourgeois_ society; in "Don Giovanni" he raised opera buffa in another direction to an altogether higher sphere.[77] The legend on which the opera is founded had reached the people through the tradition of centuries, and, familiar upon every stage in Europe, it held the same place in the popular mind as the myths of Greek tragedy. The facts, in spite of their wonderful and fantastic character, offered a good groundwork to the dramatist, and the main conception and essential elements of the situations and characters being given, the fullest freedom of construction and development was permitted in the treatment of the legend.[78] Whether the legend current in Seville {DON GIOVANNI.} (146)