MUSIC

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s opera “Don Giovanni” celebrated its 200th anniversary last week in Prague, the city where it premiered--but the trademark phrase that closes the first act, “viva la liberta,” was missing. Mozart repeated it a dozen times to pique his enemies in Vienna, the city that spurned him and the seat of the hated Hapsburgs. In September, 1968, one month after the invasion of Soviet-led Warsaw Pact tanks crushed the reform-minded “Prague Spring” of Alexander Dubcek, a conductor repeated the passage three times to tumultuous applause from the audience. But the anniversary audience sat silently and did not remark on the exclamation’s absence.