Don Giovanni and Palladio

It all happened around here: the first ever film of an opera shot entirely on location is the "Don Giovanni" of Joseph Losey, filmed around Villa San Bastiano Fogazzaro, amid some of the most beautiful villas of Andrea Palladio.

Joseph Losey, when resting in Villa San Bastiano Fogazzaro during breaks of the filming, would sit in silence on the terrace, gazing at the peaceful Valletta del Silenzio, absorbing the "silenzio" of the surrounding landscape, it's stillness: a peaceful countryside separated from the noise and activity of the film set.

The Villa La Rotonda, was chosen as the Don's residence. This is important dramatically. Giovanni doesn't merely have a beautiful house.

He occupies a perfectly ordered universe.

Four façades.


Four porticoes.


Centralised plan.


Landscape controlled from every direction.

Joseph Losey puts one of opera's most disorderly men inside one of Western architecture's supreme expressions of order. Notice what Losey achieves here: the architecture is very orderly, symmetrical and rational, while the human action occurring within it is violent and chaotic. The combination of the music narrative of Mozart and the linearity and clean geometrical structures of Palladio's architecture, create the perfect frame for the juxtaposition with the Don's libertine shenanigans and ... "The old is dead, the new is not yet born: in this interregnum a multitude of morbid symptoms appear".

Yes, Losey’s 1979 Don Giovanni is almost a cinematic tour of Palladian Vicenza. Although Mozart and Da Ponte set the opera in Spain, Losey deliberately replaced Spain with the architecture and landscape of the Veneto.

Villa Almerico Capra “La Rotonda”, Palladio’s masterpiece becomes Don Giovanni’s residence. A substantial part of the film was shot here, including the wonderful scenes of guests arriving on the monumental steps, made to seem like it was on the edge of the Venice laguna.

The Basilica Palladiana and Piazza dei Signori, where the exterior loggias were used for the fatal duel with the Commendatore, standing in for the exterior of Donna Anna’s house, amongst Palladio's great repeated arches of the loggia. The Teatro Olimpico: Losey uses Palladio’s extraordinary Renaissance theatre for several sequences, including the public confrontation/unmasking of Leporello.

Villa Valmarana ai Nani, our neighbour, stands just a short distance from both Villa San Bastiano Fogazzaro and La Rotonda and is celebrated for its magnificent Tiepolo frescoes. In Losey’s Don Giovanni, however, it takes on another identity: Donna Elvira’s palace, the setting for the episode in which Giovanni arrives intent on yet another seduction.

This makes Villa Valmarana and La Rotonda especially rewarding to visit together. In reality, the two villas are neighbours but in Losey’s invented geography, they become distinct dramatic worlds.

Villa Caldogno, just north of Vicenza — used for interiors of Donna Anna’s house. Losey separates exterior and interior space cinematically.

The Basilica Palladiana represents the outside of Donna Anna's residence, but the interiors are Villa Caldogno, another Palladian villa north of Vicenza.

So when watching the film, you appear to walk through a door in central Vicenza and enter a villa kilometres away.

That's one of the keys to understanding Losey's method.

Villa Emo at Fanzolo di Vedelago, the setting for Donna Elvira’s great Act II aria, “Mi tradì quell’alma ingrata.” Again, the serenity and mathematical order of Palladio's architecture contrasts with the emotional turmoil of Mozart's character.

And then Murano and Venice: Losey also used the lagoon. The glassworks sequence during the ouverture was filmed in Murano, providing the watery landscape that he visually connects to Vicenza.

One of the fascinating things Losey does is make these separate places appear to belong to one imaginary city. Vicenza is landlocked, yet through editing he makes Palladio’s villas, the Basilica and the lagoon seem part of the same geographical world. The result isn't intended as realistic geography: it is an invented, dreamlike “Venetian Spain” constructed out of Palladio.

And "La Rotonda" is especially important. Losey exploits its architecture dramatically: the elevated piano nobile represents Don Giovanni's aristocratic world, while the lower service areas suggest the servants' world beneath it.

Losey repeatedly uses its porticoes, staircases, great central hall and lower service areas.

When you get to the villa you will re-live the production particularly for the famous sequence of eighteenth-century figures on its monumental steps.

There is a clever social idea behind this. Losey can move vertically through the building: Giovanni inhabits the grand architectural world above, while servants and kitchens occupy the spaces below. The architecture therefore becomes part of the opera's hierarchy of master and servant, privilege and labour.

If you're interested in visiting the locations, there is a very good Don Giovanni trail you could do around Vicenza: Teatro Olimpico → Piazza dei Signori/Basilica Palladiana → Villa Valmarana ai Nani → Villa La Rotonda. The last two are close to one another and reachable on foot in minutes from Villa San Bastiano Fogazzaro .