Don Giovanni and the Illusion of Sacred Order

Don Giovanni is Mozart and Lorenza da Ponte’s two act opera about Don Juan, first performed in Prague in 1787. The central character is Don Giovanni who is a serial seducer of women. He is not depicted purely romantically as an irresistibly magnetic male force, as he is shown to manipulate women into non-consensual sexual acts. One such victim is Donna Anna, whose sleeping quarters Don Giovanni enters pretending to be her fiancée Don Ottavio. When Donna Anna’s father, the Commendatore discovers his daughter’s honor is smeared, he challenges Don Giovanni, who kills the older man without much hesitation.

This murder sets into motion the eventual fatal ending of Don Giovanni, but not before seducing Zerlina, bride of Masetto, while also trying to escape an older victim of him, Donna Elvira. Donna Elvira eventually rescues Zerlina by making clear what intentions Don Giovanni has, even if Donna Elvira really wants to reunite with Don Giovanni; strangely she knows the sinister motivations of Don Giovanni but is still attracted to him.

Zerlina oscillates between attraction to and repulsion from Don Giovanni as he promises her a future Masetto never could provide. Donna Anna and Don Ottavio also struggle to find meaning together as she is consumed by feelings of revenge and he seems lost more in the idea of romantic love and honor then actual being close to the object of his love.

Leporello is a most interesting character, he is the servant of Don Giovanni and he wishes to be master himself. He holds records of all the conquests of Don Giovanni, and warns women of the intentions of his master. Eventually Don Giovanni also seduces Leporello in helping him with his schemes. Leporello intimately knows all the facts, but can not leap into action against them. When his master meets his fate, he moves on to find a new master, taking no initiative of setting his own course.

This seems to be the central theme of the opera, the inability to change, the endless repetition this brings about, even while knowing the eventual identical outcome. To truly change, one needs to integrate one’s own shadows, and not focus on the closest sun as the source of light or reason for obscurity. This is a very difficult act for any human, as one needs to acknowledge our fundamental human nature, declaring our social norms as sacral, making them the central sun of our social universe but forgetting there really is nothing sacral about them; and also forgetting the universe has no center, but only permanent motion masked as fragments of balance.

The catalogue aria

My dear lady, this is a list
of the beauties my master has loved,
a list which I have compiled.
Observe, read along with me.
In Italy, six hundred and forty;
in Germany, two hundred and thirty-one;
a hundred in France; in Turkey ninety-one.
In Spain already one thousand and three.
Among these are peasant girls,
maidservants, city girls,
countesses, baronesses,
marchionesses, princesses,
women of every rank,
every shape, every age.
In Italy six hundred and forty, etc.
With blondes it is his habit
to praise their kindness;
in brunettes, their faithfulness;
in the very blonde, their sweetness.
In winter he likes fat ones,
in summer he likes thin ones.
He calls the tall ones majestic.
The little ones are always charming.
He seduces the old ones
for the pleasure of adding to the list.
His greatest favourite
is the young beginner.
It doesn't matter if she's rich,
ugly or beautiful;
if she is rich, ugly or beautiful.
If she wears a petticoat,
you know what he does.
If she wears a petticoat, etc

I went to see Don Giovanni at the opera in Gent at 30/12/2025.

It was an unforgettable experience.

It is amazing the human experience has already been described so well by people from such a long time ago, and in such a beautiful manor; so much better then I ever will be able to experience, let alone share to others. Yet, here is Don Giovanni, by Mozart and Lorenzo Da Ponte.

So much has already been written about this opera, then I can ever do justice to. And so, I created just one small video fragment, based on just one aria, reusing the performance by Opus Arte from 2014. It took me two months to get to this point, Mozart is such an amazing artist!

This is an aria about the unescapable forces we shape and fall prey to, an aria about the light we seek for and the shadow it casts upon us. There are other interesting forces within this opera which I may get back to later. Until then, please enjoy this beautiful aria.

It’s caused by clarity protecting what the system refuses to face.

I have been circling the same professional dynamic for more than a decade now, possibly even two — and only recently did I realise how much of it I was also carrying myself.

Ever since I read the Standish Chaos report, showing that IT project failure is more common than success, I’ve been triggered by management consulting’s limited ability to structurally reduce failure odds in complex, multi-year programs.

To avoid failure, the dominant moves often seem to be either avoiding a clear commitment altogether, or “throwing away the baby with the bathwater.” Both lead to a standstill: a plateaued program that looks hyperactive on the surface, but is in reality treading water.

In such situations, the uncomfortable truth may be that there never was firm ground to begin with, and that the next responsible move would be to dismantle the program gracefully. But there is often another possibility: a comfortable lie that materialises stagnation — a void hidden in plain sight by governance rituals.

That lie usually sounds like “we’re doing this to make things better,” while remaining vague about the concrete choices being made, the trade-offs involved, and the uneven consequences for different actors. Progress is never neutral — and that is precisely why such statements are only partly true, and so easy to support.

Over time, I’ve learned that stagnation is not always the final phase before a program’s end. It can also be a transition phase — turbulent, sometimes destabilising — before revitalisation, if a team finds a way to acknowledge and fill the void rather than cover it.

That turbulence has also been mine in 2025. Because no external transformation I’ve witnessed ever came without an internal one — and this time, I could no longer pretend I was only observing it from the outside.