My view of Zerlina is not that she is actually eager to be beaten (except perhaps as a part of sex games - she is quite a minx, and Masetto's brutal reference to Don Giovanni "riding" her has a shadow of explanation, if not justification, in her habit of teasing and encouraging him); what she is doing is being disarming - to disarm him. He acknowledges this in his line: Guarda un po' come seppe questa strega sedurmi! Siamo pur noi i deboli di testa. That is slightly hard to translate - the verb "to seduce" would give entirely the wrong impression - but it means something like: Just you look at how this witch managed to charm me out of my anger! We men are really all weak in the head. Which, incidentally, is a universal feminine talking point - "all boys are idiots" and the like. I suppose that, as a native, I pay more attention to the dialogue than most, but the fact is that Da Ponte is miles above the average libretto hack: he is a seriously good playwright whose scripts would deserve attention independently of Mozart's music, and whose every line counts.

On another matter, there is no need to thank a Catholic for taking the teachings of his Church seriously. It is mainly thanks to reflecting on Christian teaching on these matters that I came long ago to reject the commonplaces about sexual freedom in which, as a child of the Sixties, I had grown up.