Photo: Mihaela Bodlovic

In omitting the final sextet, the Royal Opera House’s opening-night production of Don Giovanni opts for an ambiguous ending rather than a didactic staging of the famous seducer’s descent to hell. This approach largely worked thanks to the convincing stage presence of Canadian baritone Gordon Bintner in the title role.

The current revival of Kasper Holten’s 2014 production also largely sidesteps any potential issues of sexual violence. Here, Donna Anna (Rachel Willis-Sørensen) is not a victim but a willing participant whose consensual tryst with Don Giovanni at the beginning of the opera is repeated during Don Ottavio’s (Bogdan Volkov) “Dalla sua pace.” Sly and retributive, Willis-Sørensen leaned into a Donna Anna who alternates between her desire for Don Giovanni and her professed devotion to Don Ottavio. Her loyalty to her father, the Commendatore (Andreas Bauer Kanabas), however, fails to intelligibly register in this production. Willis-Sørensen’s “Or sai chi l’onore” and “Non mi dir” were both dramatically compelling, although her upper register occasionally lost its usual brilliance.

The Holten production relies heavily on digital scenography, leaving little for those hoping for a more tactile brush with Mozart. I found my usual prejudice against this medium dissipate under Luke Halls’s measured video design and set designer Es Devlin’s rotating labyrinth set. The design rests on projections of ink forming names, presumably those from Don Giovanni’s little black book, as the ink spreads across the stage, eventually leaping from the digital realm onto the dresses of the women with whom he has been involved. As the ink stains permeate the dresses of Donna Anna and Donna Elvira (Aigul Akhmetshina), Zerlina’s (Giulia Semenzato) stark white bridal gown sets her apart as a more elusive figure. With a radiant bell-like soprano, Semenzato plays a precocious and unconventionally assertive Zerlina, who shrewdly tears open her own gown during the Act I finale.

Photo: Mihaela Bodlovic

Against these complicit and manipulative women emerges a chaotic Don Giovanni, whose increasingly fractured experience of reality finds its visual analogue in the kaleidoscope video projection accompanying “Fin ch’han dal vino.” Despite the production’s visual excess that could have easily drowned out his sound, Binter brought the anchored, velvety vocal presence one hopes for in a Mozartian baritone.

Both technically and theatrically, Binter and Roberto Tagliavini (Leporello) dominated the production. Tagliavini possesses an enviable talent for comic timing and patter, cementing the two as a formidable duo. Akhmetshina was at her vocal best in “Mi tradi quell’alma ingrata.” Overall, conductor Stefano Montanari delivered a sprightly reading of the score, although at times the balance between the pit and stage threatened to overpower the singers.

Operas depicting sexual violence are often touted as relevant or as opportunities for contemporary moral reckonings, but Holten’s Don Giovanni is one without an instruction manual. Side by side, Donna Anna the willing participant and Zerlina the manipulator of her own circumstances raise more questions consent than they answer. Without the traditional final sextet, there is also less sense of moral resolution; Donna Elvira does not join a convent, Donna Anna and Don Ottavio don’t set a future wedding date, and Zerlina and Masetto don’t return to marital bliss. What remains, however, is Don Giovanni’s descent to hell. Much of the strength of this production lies in its refusal to resolve the fates of the other characters, allowing issues of violence and agency to linger beyond Giovanni’s punishment.