Don Giovanni

Mozart had an uncanny knack for aggravating the aristocrats who were his employers. His previous opera, The Marriage of Figaro, depicted servants who always outwitted their masters. Now, with Don Giovanni, he turns what had been a silly stock comedy piece into a morality play in which the protagonist is another aristocrat, this one licentious and gluttonous, who commits rape and murder. And in the end he's dragged screaming into Hell, without even dying first. Emperor Joseph didn't know what to make of it: "Not the meat for my Viennese public, dear Mozart." Mozart replied: "Then give them some time to chew it."