Rufus Norris makes his operatic debut with Mozart's comedy – a brave choice given the piece's reputation as a director's graveyard. Despite its unassailable position in the repertoire, Don Giovanni possesses inherent contradictions. Nominally a comic opera, it begins with sexual violence and ends in divine retribution, while some of its main characters never depart from their overtly serious mode even in scenes motivated by farce. Whether Mozart and librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte got its structure right is arguable, with a stacking up of set-piece arias in the second act that can prove intractable. Norris and conductor Kirill Karabits recognise this, indulging in some minor reordering.
In their present-tense visuals, the designers suggest a Latin location, with Ian MacNeil's interiors being helpfully moved around by devils who appear like masked Mexican wrestlers in Nicky Gillibrand's costumes. Some elements are puzzling. During the overture, Giovanni seems about to rape an unknown woman, then changes his mind and opts to don her coat and hair instead. He later returns to male attire in a move not scripted by Da Ponte, though articulated in Jeremy Sams's free but often apposite English version. Perhaps it is sheer musical excitement that encourages Katherine Broderick's Anna to dance and Robert Murray's respectable Ottavio to undress in the final section of the sextet. Matthew Best's creepy Commendatore makes regular reappearances, occasionally as an amplified dying breath, though never as a statue.
Yet there is a purposiveness to much of Norris's staging – executed by the cast with striking commitment – that offsets its occasional liberties. Sarah Tynan's alluring Zerlina disarms John Molloy's threatened violence as her jealous fiance Masetto in a finely observed sequence watched intently by the extras that regularly people the stage. Vividly realised, too, is the party that ends act one in a bravura display of controlled mayhem blending the sinister and the sexual. If Norris is hardly the first director to deliver an imperfect Don Giovanni, enough of his show succeeds to make this a fascinating attempt.
Much of the singing is impressive, though Iain Paterson's Giovanni lacks the fatal charm of western art's most ruthless seducer, and Brindley Sherratt's Leporello is unduly downcast. Broderick offers potency, though sounds taxed when turning some of the trickier vocal corners. Standing in as Elvira, Sarah Redgwick was out of synch with the orchestra at one point but was otherwise assured, while Karabits drew exceptionally fine playing from the orchestra.
