The dark centrepiece of the three operas Mozart wrote with words by Lorenzo da Ponte, first produced in 1787, had messages of sex and death for two centuries later.

English National Opera 1985

Jonathan Miller's production may not be the first Don Giovanni to be clothed uniformly in black and white, but it perhaps breaks some records in placing this night piece so much out of doors. The stage is dominated by three corners of anonymous buildings, or giant book-ends, revolving to provide a variety of half-evoked interiors and street scenes. They are lit, by Robert Bryan, harshly, the cold white light coming straight from overhead as if from a spectacularly fierce full moon (if one that switches on and of rather brutally). But behind and all around there is darkness. This is the night of eros let loose, and the only people who thrive in it are Don Giovanni and, a shade more surprisingly but very aptly, Zerlina.

The others come from the daytime of moral respectability and decent social behaviour, and the figures they cut in this blackness teeter on the edge of caricature. Don Ottavio is a stuffy bore with the air of a Georgian clergyman; he leaves Zerlina and Masetto, then stops and returns to lecture them with his aria ‘Il mio tesoro’, and Maldwyn Davies's willingness to lose sweetness for plain speaking here is typical of the whole cast's readiness to follow Miller's cues to character even when these act against vocal beauty.