Don Giovanni is a 1979 film adaptation of Mozart's classic opera Don Giovanni, based on the Don Juan legend of a seducer destroyed by his excesses. The film has generally been praised as one of the finer adaptations of opera to the big screen.
In the opera the action supposedly takes place in Spain, but Mozart's librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte wrote in Italian, and this film successfully uses locations in Venice and the Veneto.
The following plot summary could equally be applied to the original opera. After an unsuccessful attempt to seduce Donna Anna (soprano Edda Moser), Don Giovanni (bass Ruggero Raimondi) kills her father Il Commendatore (bass John Macurdy). The next morning, Giovanni meets Donna Elvira (soprano Kiri Te Kanawa), a woman he previously seduced and abandoned. Later, Giovanni happens upon the preparations for a peasant wedding and tries to seduce the bride-to-be Zerlina (mezzo-soprano Teresa Berganza), but his ambition is frustrated by Donna Elvira.
Donna Anna soon realizes that Giovanni killed her father, and she pursues the seducer along with her fiance Don Ottavio (tenor Kenneth Riegel). Ever ready to attempt a seduction, Giovanni woos Elvira's maid. As part of his plans, he switches clothes with his servant Leporello (bass-baritone José van Dam), who rapidly finds himself in trouble with people who mistake him for his master. Leporello flees and eventually meets Giovanni at the cemetery where Il Commendatore is buried. They jokingly invite the statue at his grave to dinner. While they are dining, the supernaturally revivified statue arrives, and the horrified Giovanni is drawn into an open-pit fire.
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