Antonio Pappano, music director of the Royal Opera. Photo © Clive Barda, courtesy Royal Opera

Don Giovanni at the Garden

When: 27 Sep 2008 (various dates)

Where: Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

Opening Hours: 7pm; 4 Oct 12pm

Web site: Royal Opera Website

Music director Antonio Pappano conducts the second set of performances of Francesca Zambello's stylish Royal Opera production of Don Giovanni with another tip-top cast on Covent Garden's stage.

Perhaps better known as Don Juan, Don Giovanni was the product - like the contemporaneous Casanova - of the times. Mozart and his librettist da Ponte embellished the legend not only with some of the most sublime music ever composed, but also with a final denouement where our (anti-) hero gets his just desserts by being dragged down to Hell.

It all starts as the Don is trying to seduce Donna Anna. Disturbed by her father, the Commendatore, the Don kills him and escapes with his lackey, Leporello. Things start to spiral out of control when a previous conquest, Donna Elvira, arrives. To put her off, the Don instructs Leporello to tell her the truth about his sexual conquests, but that only raises her zeal in trying to stop him in his tracks.

As Donnas Elvira and Anna team up, with Anna's beau, Don Ottavio, against him, Don Giovanni still thinks he can play the field and tries to seduce peasant girl Zerlina right from under her fiancé Masetto's nose. Only the dread warning given by the Commendatore's cemetery statue hints at what is ahead, though only when the statue arrives at the Don's for a final meal does he realise he will have to pay for his profligate life.

The second cast is headed by Polish baritone Mariusz Kwiecien as the titular Don, who sings his role for the first time at Covent Garden as do Lorenzo Regazzo as long-suffering Leporello, Patrizia Coifi as Donna Anna, Emma Bell as Donna Elvira and Alex Esposito as Masetto. Ian Bostridge returns to the role of Don Ottavio as does Rebecca Evans as Zerlina and Eric Halfvarson as the Commendatore. David Syrus conducts the final, matinée performance.

This season - music director Antonio Pappano's seventh - in addition to major revivals, there are five operas new to the House: Cavallo's La Calisto, Rossini's Matilde de Shabran, Korngold's Die Tote Stadt and a double bill of Dido and Aneas with Acis and Galatea, as well as new productions of Hänsel und Gretel, The Beggar's Opera and Der Fliegende Holländer.

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