Don Giovanni – review

There's plenty of sex in Don Giovanni: Lorenzo da Ponte, Mozart's librettist, saw to that. With rape and murder in the opening scene, it's already explicit enough, you might suppose. Yet in updating the action in Mid-Wales Opera's new staging, the director Martin Lloyd-Evans has not been able to resist pimping it up. Literally.

In the red light district of an American city, Donna Anna appears to be a prostitute; her father, the Commendatore, and her fiance, Don Ottavio, clock her clients in from the next-door booth; Don Giovanni is an underworld baron. He is given contemporary cultural credentials: the aria cataloguing his conquests includes Las Vegas at "mille e tre" (1,003) and, at his final dinner in a diner, he is trussed and skewered on a trolley before being rolled out to roast in Hell's Kitchen. Were the opera sung in Italian, they might get away with it, but in English – taking huge liberties with Amanda Holden's translation – it makes a nonsense of the plot and labours the comedy. The wittier bits are too few and far between to have impact, bar the appearances of the Commendatore, who pops up with ghoulish regularity and is played with his customary largesse by Keel Watson.

Compensation for an otherwise dire night comes in the strong musical values of the conductor, Nicholas Cleobury. In the title role, Njabulo Madlala – winner of the 2010 Kathleen Ferrier prize – has undeniable charm when at his most velvet toned but, overall, his performance is uneven, as is that of the MWO stalwart Wyn Pencarreg as Leporello. The women shine brightest: Catrin Aur's Anna, Helen Sherman's Elvira and especially Anna Patalong's sparky Zerlina are stylishly sung. If only the company hadn't gone for the sleazy option.

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