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How did Lorenzo Da Ponte expand the earlier one-act Don Juan libretto?
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Don Giovanni
Illustration (c. 1914) of a scene from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera Don Giovanni (1787), in which Don Giovanni attempts to seduce Zerlina.
Lorenzo Da Ponte expanded the earlier one-act Don Juan libretto—originally written by Giovanni Bertati and set by Giuseppe Gazzaniga—by rewriting the text and inserting new episodes into the narrative. This structural expansion explains certain features of the final two-act work, allowing for the extended musical spans and complex character development that distinguish Mozart’s Don Giovanni from typical opera buffa.1