The Royal Opera’s ambitious new season opens with a powerful Don Giovanni

Ivan HewettFri, September 11, 2026 at 2:30 PM UTC

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Gordon Bintner as Don Giovanni and Aigul Akhmetshina as Donna Elvira - Alastair Muir

The Royal Opera’s new season is nothing if not ambitious. There are 10 new productions, including the unveiling of the final instalment of Barrie Kosky’s acclaimed Ring cycle, and a staging of Mozart’s Così fan Tutte from Netia Jones, a director best known for her spectacular video-enhanced productions. However, the company launched its season with something tried and tested: Kasper Holten’s staging of Mozart’s darkest opera, Don Giovanni, first seen in 2014 and now in its sixth revival.

Holten sees the Don as a damaged creature, a husk desperate to fill the void in himself. But he begins as the masterful seducer, played here by Gordon Bintner with a velvety if not very forceful voice, and a languid grace like one of those Whistler portraits of an American plutocrat. Then, when a pretty girl hoves into view, he focusses like a laser.

From the beginning we feel his doom gathering round him, thanks to Es Devlin’s darkly labyrinthine set. This revolves constantly to reveal staircases and recesses behind the elegant façade – as if we’re peering inside the Don himself. Even while the overture is playing, we see Luke Halls’s video projections of the names of his innumerable conquests spreading like bindweed across the stonework, and sliding over Anna Vang Kragh’s glittering mid-19th-century costumes. We could be in a Henry James ghost story.

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Luke Halls’s video projections spread like bindweed across the stonework - Alastair Muir

There’s much to enjoy during the Don’s slow descent, not least the comic interplay with his servant Leporello, played by Roberto Tagliavini. Veering between defiance, admiration and horror, he seems as fatally seduced by the Don as his numerous women are. Aigul Akhmetshina as Donna Elvira is wonderful, especially in her defiant, Handel-like aria, Ah, flees the traitor!. Rachel Willis-Sørensen is a touchingly heart-broken Donna Anna, who wants to avenge her father’s death at the Don’s hands, but is still attracted to him. Giulia Semenzato is deliciously pert and vocally scintillating playing the crafty farming girl Zerlina, and Bogdan Volkov as Donna Anna’s betrothed Don Ottavio sings his famous aria of devotion with melting tenderness. Most striking was Dingle Yandell, who actually had more vocal heft as Zerlina’s betrothed Masetto than the Don himself.

Rachel Willis-Sørensen is a touchingly heart-broken Donna Anna - Alastair Muir

But there is quite a lot to be annoyed by, too. To have Donna Anna sneak upstairs to sleep with Don Giovanni while Don Ottavio pours out his devotion downstairs just seems like a cheap shot. Conductor Stefano Montanari pushes the tempos relentlessly, which stifles the singers even when it’s dramatically apt – which isn’t always the case. The video projections in the end become wearying. And if you enjoy the symmetry of the original opera, which begins with a murder and ends with the Don’s death, you’ll be frustrated with this production. The final image is powerful, but it shrinks the ending to the dimensions of a single psyche. The all-important moral resonance is lost.

Don Giovanni is at the Royal Ballet and Opera London WC2 until Oct 15; rbo.org.uk

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”