Donna Elvira

Having been abandoned by Giovanni, Elvira travels all the way from Burgos in northern Spain to Seville in the South with murderous intent, in search of the man who betrayed her.  She always manages to turn up precisely when most inconvenient for the Don, usually interrupting his latest seduction.

Giovanni explains that Elivra is a 'poor unhappy creature' who is madly in love with him and to whom he has to be kind.  While we may wonder at the fact that her obsession with Giovanni is based on a relationship that lasted barely three days, Elvira always acts with the best of intentions. On two occasions, she intervenes to save Zerlina and Donna Anna – women she has never met – from Giovanni's philandering.

Elvira's feelings for Giovanni are conflicted. When she is fooled into thinking that Giovanni has mended his ways, she defends the disguised Leporello (who she thinks is Giovanni) from his attackers and calls him her husband.  While wishing Giovanni dead, she cannot help loving him: 'Yet deserted, of all hope ravished, / My poor heart his alone.'

At the Vienna premiere in May 1788, a year after the first performance of Don Giovanni, Donna Elvira was played by Caterina Cavalieri, who had performed the role of Konstanze in the premiere of Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail in 1782.