When will Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” stop being topical? 2065, maybe — matching the list of the Don’s sexual conquests his long-suffering valet, Leporello, has dutifully catalogued?
For over 230 years, the libertine has been pursued to hell by his victims: Donna Anna, goading her fiance, Don Ottavio, to revenge after Giovanni assaults her and kills her father, the Commendatore; Donna Elvira, seduced and spurned but still carrying a torch; the peasant girl Zerlina, cornered by the Don’s power on the eve of her wedding to Masetto. And yet, Giovanni returns, perpetually resurrected, perpetually relevant. Washington National Opera’s credible and cogent new production, which opened Saturday at the Kennedy Center, doesn’t have to work very hard to make him feel familiar.
