Knives out for this Don Giovanni: Richard Jones's production for English National Opera makes for a pretty depressing evening

Mozart: Don Giovanni                                                       English National Opera 

London Coliseum                                                                                Until October 26

Rating:

Richard Jones is arguably our finest opera director but this Don Giovanni is unworthy of him. To recall a celebrated description of Tosca’s premiere, he turns it into ‘a nasty little shocker’.

Here, Don Giovanni himself is a charmless, brutish leg-over merchant who, during the overture, seduces a series of women in what looks like a doss-house. 

Then he engages in sado-masochistic sex with Donna Anna while, next door, her father, the supposedly noble Commendatore, is coupling with a prostitute. 

Don Giovanni kills him with a knife through the testicles. Just right for Mum, this one.

ENO claims the performers are ‘a stellar cast’, but the estimable Christopher Purves is miscast as Don Giovanni and American Caitlin Lynch, is an unimpressive Donna Anna (together, above)

ENO claims the performers are ‘a stellar cast’, but the estimable Christopher Purves is miscast as Don Giovanni and American Caitlin Lynch, is an unimpressive Donna Anna (together, above)

The 18th century was a stylish one, when even an invoice was a work of art. Jones’s mid-20th-century setting has no charm or style, with an awful bare set and black-and-grey grungy costumes that look like a failed Co-op attempt to copy Armani.

Of course, given it’s Jones, not everything is dire. The opening Act II confusion between Don Giovanni and Leporello works well, by the simple expedient of these two baldies exchanging a ginger wig.

But there’s an irritating, silent Leporello doppelgänger, similarly clad – an operatic cliché unworthy of Jones – which telegraphs a new ending some thought a brilliant surprise but isn’t really. 

It merely confirms Jones’s lack of respect for the libretto, Da Ponte’s masterpiece.

English National Opera claims the performers are ‘a stellar cast’, but self-praise is no recommendation. 

The estimable Christopher Purves is miscast as a Don Giovanni lacking in sexual allure. Another American import, Caitlin Lynch, is an unimpressive Donna Anna. 

Why fly her in when better British singers can be found on the Northern line?

Others, however, are much better, such as Christine Rice’s excellent Donna Elvira, Clive Bayley’s masterly Leporello, Mary Bevan’s stylish Zerlina, Allan Clayton’s mellifluous Don Ottavio and James Creswell’s imposing Commendatore.

A pretty depressing evening, rendered even less pleasurable by the decision to remove one of the Coliseum’s stalls bars, replacing it with what looks like a Blackpool boarding-house lounge. 

And now there isn’t a sandwich available anywhere on the premises. No wonder the atmosphere on the second night was like a wake.