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.