I just saw Mozart’s Opera Don Giovanni at the Philadelphia Opera. I hope I am spoiling the opera for anyone when I say that Don Giovanni is sent directly into hell. He does not get the break that Faust does.  Giovanni is not what you would consider a nice person. He is mostly a rake, molester, and libertine who when given the chance, fails to repent. He gets his comeuppance.

This greatest of all operas explores sin, repentance, corruption, revenge, justice and damnation from many different perspectives and in complex ways while its music is heaven sent. This is the second time I saw the opera and I still feel I have not plumbed its depths. There is a lot to discuss. I have to wonder, if after having all the fun Giovanni has had, what if he had decided to renounce his life and repent at the end? Should he then be granted access to heaven, just like that,  through grace etc?  I think not. But I suspect the authorities would disagree with me.

Something I fail to understand is penultimate evil, as being sexual promiscuity or libertinism.  The word libertine is used as it is in the opera and is related to liberty, which is not true freedom.  I totally get that Giovanni has corrupted souls and that he has used his position as a knight and nobleman to use others.  Sex was original sin in the 17th century as it is to many even today. Humanity was created naked now must take cover. For  others of us, the story of the Garden of Eden, has more to do with knowledge and its civilizing influences than it has to do with sex, but that is a different debate.

Mass murder and sadism is far more evil in my own modern mind than is any consensual sexual act between adult parties.   A few days ago I finished reading Peter Matthiessen’s valedictory novel, In Paradise. When I bought the book I had no idea it was about visiting Auschwitz- Birkenau, only that it was Matthiessen’s final  work and it goes without saying you would not guess the subject of the book from its title. The commandant of Auschwitz, this hell on earth, was one Rudolf Hoss (or Hoess).  Hoss with his wife and children who had full knowledge of the atrocities, lived a pleasant life in a villa on the premises. He helped to design the place  and  directly saw to the murder of 2.5 million persons or 3 million, if those who died of disease and starvation are counted. Hoss admitted his guilt at the end before being hanged. He even wrote a memoir. He was not repentant however. He only admitted doing what he did.  Though he had voluntarily left the Catholic church when he was younger,  he  decided to receive the sacrament of penance from a priest and after that Holy Communion as well.  It blew  my mind by the way when I first read about this, and even does to this day, that Adolf Eichmann never expressed any remorse at all, indeed seemed happy and was one with himself through to his own hanging even though he had also seen to the slaughter of millions of people.

Leporello, Giovanni’s manservant in his famous aria Madamina, little Madam, sung to Elvira Giovanni’s erstwhile wife who has come to get him,  catalogs somewhere in the range of 2500 female conquests in an effort to either poke fun at her, or comfort her, as if to say, your situation isn’t all that bad, little woman.   Elvira isn’t comforted but  her own aims are not all that clear. She either hopes to  lure Giovanni back or kill him.  She does rescue at least one woman from his charms. The fun is in the ambivalence.   Giovanni after all of his encounters, fails to at first recognize Elvira and is attracted by her all over again.  So we have 2.5 thousands for Giovanni vs 2.5 million for Hoss, about 1000 to one.  You could argue that Giovanni corrupted the souls only and left the bodies, while Hoss may have affected only the bodies of his victims.   Hoss had to have corrupted souls as well.  the bodies can’t be separated from the souls in the case of either perpetrator.

Alternatively you could argue Hoss might have unintentionally elevated the state of some of his victims.  It’s  hard to fathom but is possibly true.   One particular case might be  the psychiatrist survivor Victor Frankl, who wrote Man’s Search For Meaning, which has been an inspiration for uncounted persons, including myself.  Others might include Elie Wiesel,  Nobel laureate, and  the priest Maximilian Kolbe who is  an example of an instantaneous act that instantiates a whole life. Kolbe gave his life for another prisoner and was eventually canonized by the Church.  To my mind Auschwitz made far more than one saint and the vast majority of these saints were not Christian. I mean saints not martyrs, as suffering is a  path to purification of the soul most often not, but in some small proportion of the time, one’s finest moment may come out of extreme suffering.

Who is the worse sinner? Which is worse, murder, particularly mass murder, or sexual incontinence?  Mass murderers are not often excommunicated by any religion. Mass murderers and sadists are not condemned nearly as often as they ought to be.   Those accused of sexual incontinence or who hold contrary opinions such as favoring divorce, or abortion, are too often condemned, ostracized or excommunicated.  I am not saying I’m  the one to judge.  Perhaps whatever hierarchy of sin you accept says more about the judge than about  the sinner.  I do have my own personal strong feelings. I’d vote hands down against the mass murderer.  For a  more complete hierarchy of sin,  please see my essay on Dante or, better yet, got to the Master himself.