Don Giovanni at his unsexiest

Every time there’s a new production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni I have to ask the same question: why is this opera, which 50 years ago was considered an unqualified masterpiece and an invariable success in the theatre, now always a wretched failure when it is staged? I would hesitate to say that the new production by Kasper Holten is the worst I have seen, since the competition is so intense. But it certainly ranks among the worst, and is all the more infuriating because a mainly excellent cast has been assembled. Anyone who longed for the previous production, by Francesca Zambello, to be supplanted will be saying, ‘Come back, all is forgiven.’ Where Zambello failed to cast any light on the opera, Holten shrouds it in impenetrable darkness, metaphorically speaking. It’s the kind of production where you keep forming hypotheses about what it may be getting at, only to be rebuffed by the next scene, and so on to the bitter end. In the opening scene, for instance, Donna Anna enters, singing in the greatest agitation that she’ll die rather than let her would-be rapist go. Here, the pair entered decorously, Anna not at all dishevelled, Don Giovanni calmly doing his tie and cufflinks, singing their violent music without touching one another, let alone Giovanni’s trying to fight free of her. I concluded that they had been enjoying themselves, and that for the sake of appearances or as a slave to conventional morality Anna was making a fuss. As the opera continued, though, there was nothing to suggest that that was its take on the work.

The set, by Es Devlin, is a two-storey affair, with flights of stairs, much used, and several rooms. Consistently singing from high up is never a good idea acoustically, and rarely dramatically. Holten’s idea here seemed to be that this is a drama, sometimes comic, sometimes tragic, of non-communication.