Mozart and Da Ponte's most unresolved antihero returned to Covent Garden in Kasper Holten's staging, the production this house brings back rather than replaces.
Kasper Holten’s staging of Mozart’s Don Giovanni opened the Royal Opera’s autumn season at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden on Thursday 10 September 2026. Stefano Montanari conducted, with Gordon Bintner in the title role.
Mozart and Da Ponte wrote the opera for Prague in 1787 and called it a dramma giocoso, a jocular drama. It opens with a rape and a murder, spends two acts on comic business, and ends with its hero dragged into hell to trombones.
Da Ponte wrote the libretto while working on two other operas at once. Opinion has never settled on whether Giovanni is a monster or a life force, and each staging gives its own answer.
Holten made his staging for this house. It puts the action inside a set of shifting projections and treats Giovanni as a man running out of room, not a seducer to be applauded. It belongs to the small group of productions Covent Garden revives instead of replacing.
The run on the Main Stage closed on Thursday 15 October 2026.
Rachel Willis-Sørensen, Aigul Akhmetshina, Roberto Tagliavini and Bogdan Volkov completed the principal cast.