Don Giovanni at Leeds Grand Theatre

Opera North opens at Leeds Grand Theatre for the launch of their Fatal Passions season which features three of the most loved operas of all time – Madama Butterfly (Puccini), Un ballo in maschera (Verdi) and the eclectic and revered Don Giovanni (Mozart). The Fatal Passions Season continues its opera extravaganza at the Lowry Theatre in March 2018.

Don Giovanni tells the lively story of opera’s most compelling lothario as he heads out on a quest for hedonistic thrills. The story is based on the story of Don Juan, it follows the impenitent libertine as he seduces his way across Europe. Despite his ‘impressive’ track record, Don Giovanni doesn’t realise that all of his misdeeds are beginning to catch up with him. Wronged ex-lover Donna Elvira is on to him and she’s rounded up many of his other conquests, both living and from beyond the grave, to join Don for dinner.

Considered one of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s darkest and wackiest operas, Don Giovanni is fast to unfold and balances a generous amount of comedy with tense drama. Mozart’s powerful musical composition stands in stark comparison to the callousness of his deeply ambiguous Don.

Director Alessandro Talevi has chosen to locate the action across two completely different eras in time – the starched Victorian period and the rock and roll era of the 1950’s. Needless to say, the set and costume provide a pleasing playground for designer Madeleine Boyd – sumptuous, dashing and beautifully detailed. Several of the scenes are staged in a Punch and Judy style within a puppet show booth, leading the audience to question exactly who is pulling the strings here.

Don Giovanni is sung in Italian with English titles and has a running time of approximately three hours. Written in the ‘recitative and aria’ style of the classical period, Opera North’s Don Giovanni brings arias, duets and ensembles of soaring beauty and a fast-unfolding story which blends comedy and melodrama with the supernatural.