Alessandro Melani The Wicked Punished (1669)

The legendary figure of the libertine Don Juan had been straddling European theater and opera stages for well over a century before Mozart got into the act with his matchless  Don Giovanni . Back in 1669, Alessandro Melani became the first composer to create a  drama for music  out of tales of this witty and licentious character, using a libretto provided by a pair of Roman poets in Filippo Acciaiuoli and Giovanni Filippo Apolloni from their adaption of the celebrated Spanish tragic drama,  El burlador de Sevilla  by Tirso de Molina. Acciauoli and Apolloni transposed the events of Seville into a mythical landscape and called Don Giovanni Acrimante and his servant Leporello Bibi. But they did not change the original plot ...