Hole in the heart | 6 October 2016

Richard Jones’s new production of Don Giovanni at ENO bears some passing resemblances to the opera as envisaged by its librettist and composer. Mainly, however, it goes its own way, refusing most of the time, especially at key moments, to listen to the music Mozart wrote, with consequences that Jones no doubt regards as ‘creative infidelity’. When we enter the auditorium we see a contemporary streetlight and a phone booth, straight out of Jones’s production of Siegfried at the Royal Opera 20 years ago. The curtain rises on a huge ‘Wanted’ poster of Christopher Purves, followed by a depressing series of bleak rooms, in one of which the Commendatore is bedding a prostitute and wearing white boxers, signifiers of nudity at ENO. Two rooms away, Donna Anna is beseeching Giovanni to humiliate her, establishing that in this version there is no question of unkinky lust, let alone love, except for the fairly innocent pair Masetto and Zerlina — everyone wears black apart from Zerlina in bridal white and her lover in his shirtsleeves.