“Là ci darem la mano” (Italian for “There we will give each other our hands”) is a duet for the characters Don Giovanni (baritone) and Zerlina
(soprano) in Mozart’s 1787 opera Don Giovanni (act 1, scene 9). The duet, with words by Lorenzo Da Ponte, is sung during the first act of the opera. Don Giovanni has just met Zerlina and her betrothed, Masetto. In an attempt to distract Masetto and have him removed from the
scene, Giovanni offers to host a wedding celebration for the couple at his castle. When Masetto has left, Giovanni attempts to seduce Zerlina to accompany him to his castle. However, after the end of the duet Donna Elvira arrives and thwarts the seduction, and leaves with Zerlina.
“Là ci darem la mano”, number 7 in the score, starts in the key of A major with a tempo indication of andante and a time signature of 2/4.
The vocal range for Don Giovanni covers E3 to E4, Zerlina’s range covers E4 to F♯5.
The piece is labelled a “duettino”, a “little duet”. This may be because the two roles sing only as a duet towards the very end of the piece, after Zerlina’s assenting Andiam!. Until then, Giovanni tries to seduce Zerlina, but she is torn between Giovanni’s exhortations and her fidelity to Masetto. Finally, the signal for her submission is a swerving chromatic melodic line, falling over almost an octave during 3 1/2 bars. After a fermata emphasising Zerlina’s weakening resolve, the tempo then changes to allegro and the time signature to 6/8. A proper twopart duet, much of it in third parallels, is then sung for most of the remaining 32 bars. A performance takes between 3 and 3 1⁄2 minutes.
In the Calypso episode of the novel Ulysses by James Joyce, Molly tells her husband Leopold Bloom that she will be singing this duet on her upcoming concert tour organised by Blazes Boylan. Molly is about to commence an affair with Boylan later that day, so this may be an unconscious hint of her intentions. In chapter XIV of Aldous Huxley’s Antic Hay, Theodore Gumbril hums the opening of this aria and imagines
his dining partner, Mrs Myra Viveash, as Zerlina, a part she is happy to play, although subconsciously he is thinking of Emily, another married woman with whom he’d rather be dining.
Franks Sinatra and Kathryn Grayson sing ‘Là ci darem la mano’ in the 1947 movie ‘It Happened in Brooklyn”. Grayson was a well known coloratura soprano, who appeared in a variety of musicals in the 1940’s and 1950’s as well as on the stage.
