Mozart's Don Giovanni and the fear of freedom

    By Tarek Ali Hassan 
    Tuesday, November 12, 2002

An unparalleled insight into the sexuality of the human male! 
Mozart Don Giovanni is one of the greatest works of art. Through the genius of Mozart equally lavished on all his characters. The music, the vocal line and the drama unfold the miracle of a daring psychodynamic analysis of human sexuality and of the deepest recesses of human nature

A treatise on male human sexuality using Mozart’s Don Giovanni 
Music, vocal line structure and drama as an explorative vehicle 
(Stipulating the reader to be well acquainted with Mozart’s greatest Operas). 

Perspectives and psycho-dynamic explorations savoring some of the riches of Mozart’s Operatic cycle (the greatest symphony on earth: 

The Marriage of Figaro (a living loving micro-cosm of human society) the first movement 

*Don Giovanni (the existential drama of the life and sexuality of the discordant male human animal) the second movement 

Cosi fan Tutte(the jocular antidote to dogma and isms for all time) the Scherzo 

The Magic flute (salvation and resolution of drama through escapism or through choosin growing into and passing the trials of fire and water) Finale 


An overview of Mozart’s Don Giovanni 

The profound psycho-emotional insights in this work are infinitely rewarding for the seeker not only because of the drama itself and the intricate subject ; human sexuality of which we know very little but because of the infinitely layered insight of genius with Mozart’s equal dedication and commitment lavished on all his characters as they express themselves through the unfolding of the music, the vocal line and the miracle of living drama in ways that seem to penetrate the layers of human defenses into the deepest subconscious motivation and energy. 

Well before Freud and Jung and Reich and well beyond the face value of the liberetto sizzling with Da Ponte’s genius, we have a process of musical psychoanalysis of the most profound nature unfolding to penetrate the most impregnable areas of the human psyche, emotions and motivation. 

Why do we know so little about human sexuality? 

The significance of that musico-dramatic penetration into human sexuality is focused as we contemplate that from beginning of recorded history a wide gulf had developed 
between the biological evolutionary forces that led to the development of Homo sapiens and the social evolution that Homo sapiens created at his /her inception with the birth of the first conscious sexually differentiated animal. 

The difference between female sexuality and male sexuality is enormous yet the male is disadvantaged in that it had to be the primodorial Mother Creatrix the giver of all or most subconscious formative knowledge who was to feed the male with the attitudes and postures that defeat his own sexuality and distort his self perception while supporting the female (at least the part of female sexuality that is advantageous to procreation and rearing of children ). 

When men effected with a vengeance the artificial and superficial patriarchal revolution -- late pre-history-- ( see Isis and Raa from the Osiris drama web site). The apparently triumphant males further complicated matters by adopting many of the dictates of the matriarchal era as their own. Even when the male deities were established and the female deities cruelly and ruthlessly destroyed, the new patriarchal masters maintained in deep unconsciousness many of the dictates of the primordial matriarchs. They even brainwashed the new patriarchal world to see these dictates as signs of male superiority and dominance!! 

The most notable amongst these anti-male adaptations was to be the institution of monogamy and the monogamous marriage institution together with the subtle falsification of human male sexuality into an eternal revolving of male around the female as supreme idol and ideal. 

The other profoundly anti-male old matriarchal rule incorporated unconsciously into the male dominance patriarchal era, has been the taboo affecting auto-sexuality and homosexuality. Awful as this taboo is to the female it falls short of annihilating her being. The results of the taboo on homosexuality and auto sexuality on the male have been devastating and annihilating. Deprived by the primordial matriarch of intimacy with self and with other males, males have historically and at so many levels sought deeply yearned for intimacy with self and other males in war and torture or spastic hero worship of tyrants and dictators. 


War, tyrant worship, violent sport and torture have been historically the only sanctioned intimate physical interaction between males. Biologically and anthropologically there has been no mechanism understand natural human sexuality. If you are a male you always had the green light to relate physically to other males if you were killing them in war or torturing them into submission or confession or forced work as captives. All that was to be acceptable without a second thought to have a physical relation with another male in love continued to be one of the ultimate taboos, the horror of horrors, the crime of crimes. The recent slight liberalization towards a physical love deeply suppressed knowledge of self and of same, contributes little to the lighting up the closely barricaded areas of self knowledge and same knowledge as the gradual liberalization is quickly sucked into the trap of socially ordained a priori patterns of behavior 

We are never allowed a virginal insight into the sexual nature of man -- or of woman for that matter -- at best we have occasional glimpses into the primal biological forces heavily twisted, manipulated and modified by social and political conditioning, distortion and amputation. Scientists are locked into the insoluble cobwebs of socially engendered stereotyping into heterosexuality or into homosexuality as a mirror image perversion even into socially engendered liberal auto sexuality, homosexuality and bisexuality. Most scientists working on sexuality and human nature have had their research compromised by a priori assumption that the socially engendered stance towards sexuality is the basic, primordial and natural reference point. 

Don Giovanni poses the enormous challenge embodying the knowledge that the socially evolved male sexuality is not natural male sexuality. Don Giovanni is a male challenging the Procrustean bed tailored for male sexuality over millions of years. We experience with Mozart, Don Giovanni’s challenge to the norm in the form of heterosexual monogamy and the heterosexual marriage institution. Don Giovanni's challenge reveals the weak , oppressed and dependent female betraying to us the dynamics of her advantage in making and maintaining the socio-political world as it is and in manipulating the direction of social evolution in lines counter to the expression of natural male sexuality which by its nature is closely linked to the concept of freedom(Viva la liberta, end of first act). In this particular drama women are observed blatantly perpetrating the formula they reserve for the male viz. to accept monogamous heterosexuality within the marriage institution or face destruction. Succumb to that pre-ordained possession or death! 

As usual in Mozart's drama giocoso even in all Mozart's drama, there are no badies and goodies. At all times you are at once laughing , crying and marveling at the human drama and the human predicament, you don't come out with affirmed enemies admired heroes and al