Don Juan (Spanish), Don Giovanni (Italian) is a legendary, fictional libertine. The first written version of the Don Juan legend was written by the Spanish dramatist Tirso de Molina (nom de plume of Gabriel Téllez). His play, El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra (The Trickster of Seville and the Stone Guest), was set in the fourteenth century and published in Spain around 1630. The name "Don Juan" is a common metaphor for a "womanizer".

Purpose

The original play was written in the Spanish Golden Age according to its beliefs and ideals, but as the story was translated and time passed the story was adapted to accommodate cultural changes.

Tirso de Molina wrote “El burlador de Sevilla” in 1630 in order to demonstrate a life-changing lesson. He saw that everyone was throwing his or her life away, living and sinning as they pleased, because they believed that in the end, as long as they repented before they died, they would receive the grace to enter heaven. Through his play, however, he shows that even Don Juan, who is identified as the very devil, a “man without a name” and shape-shifter, has to eventually pay for his sins. Tirso reminds us that we must pay for our actions, and that in the end death makes us all equal.

Don and Juan were an R&B vocal duo from Brooklyn, NY, consisting of Roland "Don" Trone and Claude "Juan" Johnson. Johnson had previously sung with a doo-wop group called the Genies, who reached #71 on the Billboard pop charts in 1959 with "Who's That Knockin'" on the Shad label. (Contrary to doo-wop lore, Trone was never with the Genies.) Their two hits were "What's Your Name", and a lesser hit, "Magic Wand".

Don & Juan's sole top 40 hit was "What's Your Name" on Big Top Records, which climbed to #7 on the Billboard pop charts in 1962.

Roland Trone died in May 1982 at age 45; Claude Johnson died on October 31, 2002, at age 67.

Their hit "What's Your Name" was featured on the soundtrack of It Came from Hollywood in 1982. It is considered one of the signature classics of the doo-wop vocal style. This song was recently nominated to the Doo-Wop Hall of Fame. "What's Your Name" was also mentioned in the film "Flipped" 2010 by fictional characters portraying "Don and Juan".

In the 1998 film Slam, there is a brief scene where two police officers are driving while arguing over the lyrics to "What's Your Name".

Don Juan —or Don Juan (el taita del barrio)— is an Argentinian tango, whose music was composed (at least in his greater part) by Ernesto Ponzio, and afterwards his letter was written by Ricardo Podestá. The date of creation (in particular, of the music) can be indicated so ancient like 1898, or 1910 according to his date of recording, and in SADAIC was registered in 1941 (but it is necessary to take into account that this entity had been founded less than a decade before).

History

There are several versions on the origin of the song, as well as of his title; almost all coincide in that it was composed in Mamita, and is usually agreed that it was during the year 1898.

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Don Juan is a 1926 American romantic adventure/drama film directed by Alan Crosland. It is the first feature-length film to utilize the Vitaphone sound-on-disc sound system with a synchronized musical score and sound effects, though it has no spoken dialogue. The film is inspired by Lord Byron's 1821 epic poem of the same name. The screenplay was written by Bess Meredyth with intertitles by Maude Fulton and Walter Anthony.

Don Juan stars John Barrymore as the hand-kissing womanizer. The film has the most kisses in film history, with Barrymore kissing (all together) Mary Astor and Estelle Taylor 127 times.

Plot

In the prologue, Don José, warned of his wife's infidelity, seals his wife's lover alive in his hiding place and drives her from the castle; abandoned to his lust, he is stabbed by his last mistress, and with his dying words he implores his son, Don Juan, to take all from women but yield nothing. Ten years later, young Don Juan a graduate of the University of Pisa, is famous as a lover and pursued by many women, including the powerful Lucretia Borgia, who invites him to her ball; his contempt for her incites her hatred of Adriana, the daughter of the Duke Della Varnese, with whom he is enraptured; and Lucretia plots to marry her to Donati and poison the duke. Don Juan intervenes and thwarts the scheme, winning the love of Adriana, but the Borgia declare war on the duke's kinsmen, offering them safety if Adriana marries Donati; Don Juan is summoned to the wedding, but he prefers death to marriage with Lucretia. He escapes and kills Donati in a duel; the lovers are led to the death-tower, but while Adriana pretends suicide, he escapes; and following a series of battles, he defeats his pursuers and is united with Adriana.

Don Juan (Russian: Дон Жуан) is an 1862 drama by Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, first published in the April issue of The Russian Messenger magazine.Don Juan never appeared on stage during its author's lifetime. In 1891, its production was deemed "unsuitable" by censors. The play was staged for the first time in 1905 by the Adelgeim Brothers troupe. Later incidental music was written for the play by Eduard Nápravník. Pyotr Tchaikovsky set the "Distant Alpujarra's lights..." piece to music; it is known as "Don Juan's Serenade".

Background

The origins of the play trace back to the end of 1857, when Aleksey K. Tolstoy first got the initial idea. By the summer of 1858 he's written Don Juan's first rough version. On March 20, 1860, he informed his friend, author and translator Boleslav Markevich that he had written and re-written the drama, then read it to critic Vasily Botkin and writer Nikolai Kruze, who gave him their approval. Markevich in his letters criticised some aspects of the play (the need for prologue, the fact that Don Juan doesn't appear in the epilogue, etc.) but his opinions were by and large ignored. In the autumn of 1961, while in Moscow, Tolstoy recited the piece to Mikhail Katkov and Ivan Aksakov; their remarks were found to be to the point and some amends were made to the text. In the end of March 1862 A.K.Tolstoy sent the manuscript to The Russian Messenger wishing to see "not a single word being crossed out" from this final version. His demand was instantly accepted and the poem appeared in the April issue of the magazine.

Donjuan (Spanish: Don Juan) is a Colombian monthly lads mag and known for its pictorials featuring popular actresses, singers, and female models, sometimes pictured dressed, often pictured scantily dressed but not fully nude.

See also

Don Juan is an adaptation by the twentieth-century German dramatist Bertolt Brecht of a seventeenth-century French play by Molière. It was the first performance of the Berliner Ensemble after its move to Theater am Schiffbauerdamm, in 1954.

Works cited

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