"Can I be your lapdog for one evening, madam?"
With this chat-up line, the disguised, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart has little success with his own wife. No, this method does not help him write an opera about Don Giovanni. He needs to find another way to project himself into Seville's most famous ladykiller. His friend Da Ponte knows exactly the right way to help him. There is, in fact, an equally famous womanizer who, although at an advanced age, can tell him exactly what it takes to melt every woman's heart. Giacomo Casanova.
An original story with ingenious plot twists follows. Mozart gets entangled in a network of spies, murders and other dark affairs. The writer and draftsman Matena doesn’t also portray 18th century Vienna to perfection with his illustrations, but he also has done thorough research into the lives of both Mozart and Casanova. This graphic novel is certainly not a biography of the two men and the encounter between the two is undoubtedly fiction, but this is precisely the strong point of this graphic novel. In music it is sometimes said that you can only improvise well if you know the piece of music through and through. Or was that when acting? Doesn’t matter. The same applies undoubtedly to writing this story. Matena picks up those few elements from both lives of the men he can use well in his work of fiction. The opposite undoubtedly can also be the case. The elements from the lives of both men will also have been a source of inspiration for writing the story.
Although I have great admiration for Matena's contribution to the revaluation of the comic by changing classics from literature into graphic novels, I mus admit to give the preference to comics like this one. 'Mozart and Casanova' may not be literature, but it certainly belongs to the top of the comic fiction.
