Why did 19th-century writers connect Don Giovanni with Romanticism?

Nineteenth-century writers and audiences were drawn to the "demonic" and supernatural elements of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Don Giovanni, which resonated deeply with the Romantic era’s fascination with intense emotion, rebellion, and the supernatural.12

The opera’s climactic scene—featuring the arrival of a vengeful, living stone statue—contains some of the most formidable music Mozart ever composed. The use of trombones, extreme chromaticism, and jarring harmonies to depict the supernatural created a powerful, foreboding atmosphere that captivated 19th-century sensibilities.12

This intensity led many performances during the 1800s to conclude with the protagonist’s descent into hell, omitting Mozart’s original lighthearted final sextet. Later audiences often found the restoration of social order in that final scene jarring, preferring instead to identify with the rebellious, libertine nature of Don Giovanni himself. This shift in interpretation reflects the Romantic tendency to prioritize individual subjectivity and the "Byronic" archetype of the defiant, brooding hero over traditional moral resolutions.123