Don Giovanni

In this aria from Act I of Don Giovanni, Leporello, Don Giovanni’s servant, attempts to warn a grieving and heartbroken Donna Elvira against further deception by his morally corrupt master, while also offering her a blunt form of consolation, by “cataloguing” Don Giovanni’s numerous and indiscriminate sexual conquests, as in this excerpt from the aria: 

In Italy six hundred and forty, 
in Germany two hundred and thirty-one, 
one hundred in France, in 
Turkey ninety-one, 
but in Spain already one thousand and three! 

Here are country wenches, 
chambermaids and city ladies, 
countesses, baronesses, marchionesses, 
princesses, there are women of every 
social class, every shape, and every age. 

Blending satire, cynicism, and uneasy humor, the aria reveals Leporello’s disgust at his master’s depravity and his resentment of his own complicity in Don Giovanni’s actions, all delivered with biting comic flair.