The ‘heroes’ of Don Giovanni (1787) and Eugene Onegin (1881) by Mozart and Tchaikovsky respectively show similar personality characteristics and behaviour; like Werther and Hermann, they are usually portrayed as attractive young men. But significantly their roles are not given to the romantic tenor but to the more ambiguous baritone. Unlike Werther and Hermann, they are realists: Don Giovanni is obsessed with his search for sexual thrills, whereas Eugene Onegin is bored with his life of philandering. Don Giovanni, though, is more than a libertine and a philanderer: he attempts to rape Donna Anna and then kills her father in a fight. Onegin similarly kills Lensky, his friend, in a duel. Don Giovanni is unrepentant, and pays the price by being dragged down to hell; Onegin is disillusioned, and is left to face a bleak and lonely future.

The figure of Don Giovanni is both universal and contemporary. In Glyndebourne's 2010/11 production, set in the 1950s, Don Giovanni is a successful and wealthy business man who believes all women will fall for him, and that if they refuse he has the right to force himself upon them. He is convinced that he is invincible. On 14 May 2011, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former Head of the International Monetary Fund, a potential French presidential candidate and a wealthy aristocrat, was arrested on suspicion of the attempted rape of an immigrant chambermaid, aged 32, in a New York hotel. A ‘self-confessed womaniser’, he acknowledged that ‘women are his weakness’: indeed, his reputation is that of ‘le grand séducteur’. But, by exposing his proclivities, the case drew adverse comment. Viv Groskop wrote in the Observer that ‘it's time that powerful male predators realised that lechery is not a trait to be proud of’. The same might be said of the former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and a number of well-known ‘celebrity’ footballers, all of whom are similarly wealthy. Whether these people are guilty or not, their behaviour raises questions relevant to Mozart's opera. What do we think about Don Giovanni's behaviour, and what is the effect of his exploits on his victims? In 2011, Kenneth Clarke, the British Justice Secretary, caused outrage by inadvertently suggesting that some rapes may be less serious than others. Just how ‘serious’, we ask, is Don Giovanni's attempted rape of Donna Anna? She is certainly portrayed as seriously affected.