Don Giovanni was commissioned by the Prague Opera immediately after the success of The Marriage: Mozart and Da Ponte wanted to build on their glory, and chose a subject that had just triumphed a few weeks earlier in Venice, Giuseppe Gazzaniga’s Don Giovanni.

Taking up the theme of the Deceiver of Seville, which had already been very much in evidence in the theatre since the mid-seventeenth century, particularly through Molière’s very strong incarnation of it, and Gluck’s signature Ballet in Vienna in 1761, Da Ponte focused the work on the libertine character of Don Juan, no doubt inspired by his friend Casanova (who, incidentally, helped to modify Act 2, Scene 9, and was present at the premiere in Prague…). The result is dazzling, never leaving the spectator the slightest respite between murders, scenes of seduction, cunning and fantastic apparitions: here is a grand spectacle that shows the musical influence of the best Gluck, with an urgency and violence unheard of in an opera buffa, served by extraordinary music, an absolute masterpiece, to which Prague gave an exceptional triumph!

The revival in Vienna was less enthusiastic, but the work won acclaim everywhere, and the impressive finale in which Don Giovanni refuses to repent and plunges into the Underworld remains one of the most powerful moments in opera.

Marshall Pynkoski sweeps the characters into a dramatic whirlwind dressed in Christian Lacroix’s fantasies: Robert Gleadow finally takes on the role of Don Giovanni.