Giacomo Casanova Juan drama at the time of his visit to Prague in 1787, but none of his verses were ever incorporated into Mozart's opera. His reaction to seeing licentious behavior similar to his own held up to moral scrutiny as it is in Mozart's opera is not recorded. In 1797, word arrived that the Republic of Venice had ceased to exist and that Napoleon Bonaparte had seized Casanova's home city. It was too late to return home. Casanova died on June 4, 1798, at age 73. His last words are said to have been "I have lived as a philosopher and
Giacomo Casanova the habits of my degraded fellow musicians." He and some of his fellows, "often spent our nights roaming through different quarters of the city, thinking up the most scandalous practical jokes and putting them into execution ... we amused ourselves by untying the gondolas moored before private homes, which then drifted with the current". They also sent midwives and physicians on false calls. Good fortune came to the rescue when Casanova, unhappy with his lot as a musician, saved the life of a Venetian patrician of the Bragadin family, who had a stroke while riding with Casanova in a gondola