La pravità castigata ("Depravity Punished") is a 1730 pastiche with music by multiple composers and an Italian language libretto by Antonio Denzio.
[2] La pravità castigata was originally performed during Lent of 1730 in the opera theater of Franz Anton von Sporck in Prague, then revived with new music by Eustachio Bambini in Brno in 1734.
[3] The origins of La pravità castigata lie in the struggles of the impresario of the Sporck theater, Antonio Denzio, to attract audiences for his productions as the appeal of his venture fell into decline.
In order to secure it, Denzio explained to the archbishop the beneficial effect for audience members of portraying on stage Don Juan's spectacular damnation for a multitude of sins never repented for.
The libretto Denzio wrote for his Don Juan opera is unusual for its time in mixing comic and serious scenes into the main fabric of the drama.
This trait is invited, of course, by the subject matter and his obvious literary model, the play Il convitato di pietra by Giacinto Andrea Cicognini, the prototype dramatization for Italian versions of the Don Juan tale, considered much more vulgar than the Spanish drama of Tirso de Molina.
In spite of the unfamiliar setting in Naples, the Denzio drama features many incidents and characters familiar to operatic audiences from Mozart's opera Don Giovanni.