MOZART'S Don Giovanni is your classic sex-addicted cad.

This fine, funny opera sees his last few bedpost notches go up before payback time.

Some of Mozart’s most memorable operatic music is within this,1 and if the theme is mercilessly sent up, with some troubling hints of misogyny and snobbery, the music is seriously intoxicating.

There is an apocryphal tale, recalled in the programme of the ink being wet on the manuscripts as they were handed to the orchestra when Mozart was preparing it for its Prague premiere in 1787.

The score is very string-heavy, including a crazy Fortepiano Continuo and a solo Mandolin played pizzicato at one point. Some members of the audience decided to unhelpfully accompany the exquisite music by humming along. I think just so the rest of us knew they knew it!

This production suffers from too many ideas, especially in the First Act. To show Don Giovanni is an Everyman Don Juan, seducing in all times and places, we have characters costumed from various eras, including some 50s peasants, an 80s Donna Elvira, a modern Don and a Victorian style Donna Anna. I get the point, but it is mainly a mess.

There is also a bizarre ‘walking’ scene, where characters perform a kind of moon dance while an overhead light is pulled along.

I’m sure it seemed like a good idea at the time. Saying that, the Opera North faithful seem to take these transgressions in the spirit of fun, and as it progresses, they irritate less.

The devil may get all the best tunes, but it is the girls who are the real powerhouses, musically. Meeta Raval is a lovely-voiced Donna Anna (attempted DG conquest) while Claire Wild is a sassy, saucy Zerlina (Bride and attempted DG conquest). Matthew Hargreaves is funny, a physical maestro as Leporello, Don Giovanni’s servant, and the comic double act of him and William Dalzeley as Don Giovanni is wicked, if slightly under-voiced from both.

For all its exuberant, slightly immature chaos, I am sure Mozart himself would have approved of this inventive, silly production.