Don Giovanni the reprobate

So I have continued to explore the world of opera. I have discovered a few things, let me state these things.

I have always loved Jussi Björling and as a swede, I am also proud of him. He is a one of the greatest tenors, one of the best many would say. Another tenor that really has a beautiful voice, and that can act, is Placido Domingo, I love him in the film La Traviata from 1982. If we speak about sopranos, I have come to the conclusion that my favourite is Anna Moffo. She has a wonderful voice that is warm and full which conveys great feelings, and she is exceeding beautiful, and a good actor, I love her in the film from 1968. The sad thing with both Jussi Björling and Anna Moffo is that the recording qualities was not like today. But still there are many recordings with good audio quality, but very few movies. This was a parenthesis. 

Let us talk about the world of opera. It is very often a world which is sinful and depraved. I am not fully sure about the world of opera and Scripture’s commandment of separation from the world and its pleasures. We must be watchful, and certainly reject this modern phenomenon of nakedness in the operas. It is unforgivable. And we can see that when the world take these operas and make it into today’s world the depravity increases, it gets worse. I have no love for it. And I sometimes have a hard time understanding it. But many times can these operas be a kind of typology of things we see in the world, or see when we inspect ourselves. It is not always beautiful what we see then. But sometimes we see beautiful things in the world of opera: Like transformation, and repentance, and forgiveness. We have in La Traviata Violetta, a fallen woman that has lived in sin, despair and has a fruitless life without any real purpose that repents of her sin, her falleneness, for to use a term by Heidegger, and is clearly forgiven by the Lord. This is one of the few in the world of opera, I believe. 

La Rondine which follows in the footstep of La Traviata in a way, where we have the courtesan Magda that calls herself Paulette, that fall into love with a man called Ruggero, they both follow their dreams, where the dreams are leading them, is the most important thing in their life until the day she recognise that the dream can destroy another person, or maybe it is the poverty of Ruggero that holds Magda back, one could believe that if one was a cynic. I prefer to think that she woke up and understood that when Ruggero wants to marry her that it is a step too far for her. She can be his lover but not his wife because that would in a way be a lie. She knows this and leaves Ruggero in a heartbreaking scene. It is a sad story, where she says that her past cannot be forgotten, destiny has decreed that their love cannot be, and she says to Ruggero, “Let this sorrow be mine alone.” It is a tragic story which not acknowledge that their is a God that has decreed everything that comes to pass, and his providence is what upholds all of us, or that acknowledge that there exists sin and forgiveness. 

La Boheme, for example is also only a very tragic love story, it contains love, death and sorrow, but it have no perspective on sin or eternity of any kind. The marriage of Figaro, on the other hand, is a fun opera, which is built on misunderstandings and clever people trying to deceive one another. And if that would be all it would be hard to recommend it because it has a theme about the count that is a womaniser and unfaithful to her, who falls in the trap which is set up for him. But he understands at the end of the opera how his behaviour has hurt his wife, and he begs for forgiveness. This has nothing to do with Jesus Christ and the atonement, but people reconciling is something beautiful and important, we can learn something from it. 

But we have another opera, like Mozart’s Don Giovanni, where we can find the typology of the reprobate.Let us first state that this is one of the most beautiful operas I ever heard. The music is so sublime, the singing also. I cannot find word to describe its beauty. La Traviata, Don Giovanni and La Bohème are master works by three different master composers. 

Don Giovanni is a man that goes from woman to woman, what we today would call a sex addict, a person without a normal heart, without a normal emotional life, that sees every woman as a tool for his pleasure, for his book where he writes up every woman he has conquered. He is also a violent man, and he ravishes some women, and he has no problems with killing if he sees it as necessary. In short: He has not conscience at all. He is cold as ice. He is a reprobate.

In Calvinistic theology, we come across what is called double predestination, that God has predestined some to eternal wrath and some to eternal joy in his presence. This concept was very hard for me once, and I rejected it without even try to understand if it was biblical. But it is apparent when reading Scripture that this is a true concept, this is what Scripture teaches. Man cannot come to saving faith without God regenerates man first, it is a gift from God, but God does not regenerate every man, so we have this asymmetric view of the double predestination. The one God has appointed to heaven he will positively regenerate and give saving faith, the one appointed to wrath and justice God passes by, and they will receive righteous justice at the end, which will mean eternal wrath in hell. It is more like a passive judgment. God does not force these to sin, he does not implant within them an evil heart.

And it is very easy to become hardened. Please listen to this wisdom. When man transgress the law of God, when man is crossing a boundary, something happens within, something dies within, something is destroyed, and if it is a soul-destroying sin it will impact him very negatively, and next time he will cross this boundary much easier, and in this way will it continue until reprobation or until he is awakened by God by his chastening grace and lovingkindness. 

God does not force Don Giovanni to sin, he in a way let him alone (he passes him by), “Every plant, which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up. Let them alone” (Matthew 15:13–14), which will inevitable lead to sin and destruction. And when we meet Don Giovanni is he already a hardened sinner trying to ravish Donna Anna, and when she becomes free and is chasing him instead and her father comes trying to save his daughter is he instead killed by Don Giovanni, so we are sure already at the beginning of the opera that Don Giovanni is a hardened soul, he has no heart but has a way with women whom he in a way destroys one at a time, and he is even ready to kill if it suits him. He feels no sorrow, no remorse, he is truly despicable. He is a reprobate. 

The rest of the opera shows that he has no heart at all, he is ready to destroy true love, innocent hearts, even his servant despise him, sees him as a lunatic, and thankfully we also see how  donna Elvira is trying to save other innocent girls, and donna Anna want revenge for her fathers killing. And the snare is tightened around Don Giovanni, at the cemetery he sees the statue which on its base has an inscription: “Here am I waiting for revenge against the scoundrel who killed me.“ He invites the statue to dinner, he has no fear, and no understanding. Donna Elvira comes again to ask Don Giovanni to change his life, which he refuses, tauntingly. Then the statue of the Commendatory, donna Anna’s father arrives, and he offer Don Giovanni to repent of his sins, which he refuses once again. He does not fear anything. He does not repent of anything. He is appointed to damnation. He is a reprobate, and he is cast into hell.

Everyone that has seen the opera can recognise that Don Giovanni is a lost man, and we can see many like him in the world. But we better remember that only God knows whom he has let alone, the purpose of God is hidden from us, so as long as we live we shall pray for our friends, for our family, for them in leading position because that is the will of God. Don Giovanni is a type for the reprobate, he is let alone, he is passed by of God according to his, unknown to us, purpose, where he will harden himself and later on like Pharaoh, also be hardened by God as judgment here in time. Hardening of the heart is a judgment from God. It something we do ourselves, and later on, it is something God does as judgment on our hearts. We should always beware of this, the possibility of our hearts hardening. Let us always examine our hearts and our faith. If we find hardening, unconfessed sins, enmity toward God, or any other sin or transgression let us come to Jesus Christ and confess our sins because he has promised to forgive us all our sins if we confess them (1 John 1:9).

Why does God harden some hearts? It is all for the glory of God, where his attributes will be manifested, either his mercy and grace in that he saves man from sin, redeems him from the captivity of sin, or that he manifests his justice in that the judges the sinner according to his perfect and holy righteousness. No one deserves to come to heaven, to have ones sins forgiven; we all deserve to end up in hell because of our sins which are cosmic treasons against a holy and infinite God. I know, we cannot understand what an infinite God is, but we can listen to Scripture that describes a perfect and holy God that cannot even view sin, who must punish sin. He cannot share heaven with us if we are not made holy, and his purpose we can read about in Romans 28–30, “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to _his_ purpose. For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate _to be_ conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.” And a few verses later, Scripture reveals, “Therefore hath he mercy on on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth” (Romans 9:18), it is God’s purpose according to election that counts (Romans 9:11), and “Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour? _What_ if God, willing to shew _his_ wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction: And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory” (Romans 9:21-23). God is sovereign, and by God’s grace we are saved, and God’s purpose runs this world, in that “all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”