Unlike Joseph Losey’s famous (but seriously overrated) 1979 film (Second Sight, 4/08), this is not a ‘straight’ screen adaptation of a complete Don Giovanni, rather an interpreted version based on just over half the opera, following Mozart and da Ponte’s musical and dramatic narrative more or less in order. As I want to recommend this release, I will not give away too many details. Suffice it to say that we are in a modern city (Budapest was used). Giovanni is ‘Juan’, a famous artist whose life work is capturing images of womanhood, the Commendatore is the city’s police chief and Leporello is more sidekick than servant, although he ‘works’ for Juan.

Although traditionalists and scholars might not agree, it’s really irrelevant to talk about the musical version here but, for the record, most of the ensembles and much of the recitative are not used, some spoken remarks have been interpolated and the language used is English. A very free English (although the libretto’s characters are maintained) which feels like it may have been improvised in rehearsal and, in the case of Petrenko’s Leporello, is intentionally (and amusingly) a kind of Russian pidgin-speak. Da Ponte would surely have laughed along with Zerlina’s reference (in ‘Giovinetti’) to men undoing bra straps and Leporello’s version of ‘O statua gentilissima’ as ‘O glossy framed facsimile / of dead police commander’.

The well-chosen cast, led by Maltman’s assured, sexy Juan, truly look and sound great. We are told that the singing was done live on location – and maybe it was! Despite (or because of) the modern setting and the little character rationalisations mentioned above, Juan has much to say about the psychology of Don Giovanni. But perhaps the ultimate achievement of the Royal Opera House’s Kasper Holten in his first feature film (co-scripted with noted Danish writer Mogens Rukov) is to make an ‘opera film’ that really doesn’t look like singers standing around a street in costume wondering why they’re not in a theatre. Even if you’re phobic about ‘modern’ productions, give this a go.