redoubled, he mocks at her with all the frivolity of his pleasure-seeking nature. This is too much even for Leporello: he sympathetically approaches Elvira; and the effect is very fine, when the same notes which seemed to threaten annihilation by their weight at Elvira's entrance are heard from the mouth of Leporello. Don Giovanni's overbearing insolence increases and calls down upon him the fate to which, now that even Elvira has left him, he is doomed to hasten. This scene is again a very masterpiece of high dramatic art. A flow of passionate emotion, like a lava stream down the mountain side, succeeds to the loosely connected musical jests of the supper-table. The very change of tone-colouring is of the greatest significance. The first noisy and brilliant movement, with its trumpets and drums and lively passages for the stringed instruments, is succeeded by the arranged harmony music, against which the full orchestra, with the combined strength of wind and stringed instruments, stands in bold relief. Don Giovanni and Elvira are here for the first time opposed on equal terms. Her passionate emotion is purified and ennobled without any loss of strength or reality; and he displays an energy and keen enjoyment of life which would have something great in it if it were directed to higher aims, but which here excites only horror. It prepares us for the resistance which he is to make to the spectral apparition; but the insolent scorn with which he hardens himself against Elvira's prayers is more shocking to the feelings than his determined resistance to the horrors of the nether world, wherein we cannot but grant him our sympathy. Sharply accented as are the mocking tone of mind and the sensuality of Don Giovanni, we never find him vulgar or revolting. This is due to the combination of strength and boldness with beauty of form in the music allotted to him. What can be more impressive than the oft-repeated motif given to Don Giovanni:--[See Page Image] {DON GIOVANNI'S CHARACTER.} (197)