Don Juan, the hero of a 14th-c. Spanish legend, probably originating in Seville with a Don Juan Tenorio, an amorous adventurer. In this legend he kills in a duel the Count Ulloa who is defending the honour of his daughter, Donna Anna. He later invites the monument (a stone statue) on the Count's grave to supper. The statue appears, takes his hand, and sinks into the ground with him to the infernal regions. Don Juan's insatiable vitality and sensuality, and his condemnation, were first dramatized in a play attributed to Tirso de Molina (El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra, a religious play, 1630). Tirso calls the count Don Gonzalo. The legend became known, with variations, in Italy and France (Molière, Don Juan ou Le festin de Pierre, first performed 1665), before L. Da Ponte wrote the libretto for Mozart's opera Don Giovanni. Da Ponte's text is based on Giuseppe Gazzaniga's opera Don Giovanni ossia Il Convitato di pietra (first performed in Venice in 1787, the year of the first performance of Mozart's opera in Prague).

Among the many German treatments of the subject the following may be mentioned: E. T. A. Hoffmann's story Don Juan (1813), C. D. Grabbe's tragedy Don Juan und Faust (1829), Faust und Don Juan (3 vols., 1846) by G. Hesekiel, N. Lenau's dramatic poem Don Juan (1851); Don Juans Ende (1883) by P. Heyse, Don Juan (1909) by Karl Sternheim, Don Juan (1919) by Waldemar Bonsels, Don Juans Tod by Georg Trakl (extant fragments are published in the collected edition of his works), Don Juan oder die Liebe zur Geometrie (1953) by Max Frisch, and Don Juan (Tondichtung based on Lenau, 1889) by Richard Strauss.