Don Giovanni - Royal Ballet and Opera

Don Giovanni - Royal Ballet and Opera description

There are operas, and then there is Don Giovanni. Mozart and his librettist Lorenzo da Ponte created something extraordinary in 1787: an opera that is at once a sparkling comedy and a shattering tragedy, built around one of the most magnetic anti-heroes in all of Western art. Two and a half centuries later, it continues to bewitch and disturb in equal measure.

The story follows the irresistible, incorrigible Don Giovanni — a nobleman of insatiable appetite whose conquests, according to his servant Leporello, number in the thousands. But when he murders the father of one of his victims and the dead man's stone statue rises to demand repentance, even this most fearless of libertines must face a reckoning he cannot charm his way out of. It is a story about desire, freedom, and the terrible cost of refusing to be accountable to anyone or anything.

Mozart's score is a miracle of drama and invention — aria after aria of unforgettable melody, ensembles of breathtaking intricacy, and a final scene that sends shivers down the spine. The da Ponte trilogy — The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte — represents one of the supreme achievements in the history of opera, and this work sits at its magnificent centre.

Director Kasper Holten, whose visionary productions have defined operatic storytelling for a generation, brings his formidable theatrical intelligence to the Royal Opera House stage. His staging captures the opera's mercurial spirit — its dazzling wit, its lurking darkness, and its final plunge into the supernatural.

If you see one opera this year, make it Don Giovanni. There is nothing quite like it.

Playing at Royal Opera House

Bow Street, London, WC2E 9DD GB (venue info)

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