and retires to a nunnery. Don Giovanni proceeds to sup merrily [concertino]; Pasquariello eats with him, and Lanterna wait upon them; they toast the town of Venice and its lovely women.[128] A knock is heard, and, to the horror of the two servants, the Commandant appears. Don Giovanni bids him welcome, and orders Pasquariello to serve him; he accepts the Commandant's invitation, giving him his hand on it, but rejects his exhortation to repentance, and is delivered over to the demons.[129] A "Convitato di Pietra," by Tritto, is known to me only through Fétis, who places it in the year 1783.[130] A wealth of material, which made the task of selection difficult, left Da Ponte no necessity to task his invention for his libretto.[131] We have no means of ascertaining how deep or how extensive were his previous studies,[132] but even compared with Gazzaniga's libretto, which he closely followed for the greater part of the first act and the second finale, we cannot fail to recognise his superiority in the arrangement of the plot, in the delineation of character, and in the grouping of situations for musical treatment, especially in the ensembles. His discrimination in the selection of material was also very just. He saw clearly that if the spectral apparition was to have its due effect it must be set in vivid contrast with the representation of actual life, with all its impulses of passion, of love, hate, or despair, of humour and merriment. He cannot be said to have cast the magic of true poetry over his work, nor has it the knightly tone of the Spanish original, but he has endowed {DA PONTE'S LIBRETTO.} (161)