London Coliseum, 30 September 2016

Richard Jones has directed a wide range of productions for ENO over recent years and while they are often challenging they are normally highly sensitive to the work concerned. Unfortunately he seems to have come unstuck with his approach to Mozart’s Don Giovanni. It is quite reasonable to paint a corrupt world within which Giovanni operates but another altogether to suggest that there is not a single likeable person on stage. In his opening scene we see two rooms; Anna is setting up a sex game with Giovanni while next door her father is with a prostitute. How are we to have any sympathy for Anna in her emotional out-poring to Don Ottavio when we know she brought the whole situation on herself? The same is true of virtually everyone else on stage and as such we are consistently alienated from the action. When we add to this the use of black clothing throughout and the dank, if vast, interior sets and brutalist lighting, there is little to make us engage with the narrative. Added to this, the constant sweep of walls and doors, with the cast endlessly moving about, cuts across the structure of the score.

Thankfully the singing is excellent throughout with Christopher Purves a slimy if sure-footed anti-hero. He does not need to seduce any of the women; they simply throw themselves at him. Caitlin Lynch and Christine Rice as Anna and Elvira respectively are heroic in voice even when they are required to act against the score. Most at ease is Allan Clayton’s mellifluous Ottavio, whose refined Dalla sua pace is one of the few reflective moments in the first half. Clive Bailey’s Leporello seems deliberately to mimic Michael Caine though he creates a credible comic follower not averse to acting independently of his master. Nicholas Crawley and Mary Bevan are finely cast as Masetto and Zerlina, their relationship uneasy from the start, though there is no sense of class differences in this production.

Mark Wigglesworth takes a speedy approach to the score as if he wants to ensure there is no time for us to think or applaud between numbers. The orchestral playing is fine but the endless attack becomes wearing after a time.

With fewer new productions this season there was a hope that Richard Jones’ reputation would launch things in style. Perhaps this was not quite the style we were expecting.