Giovanni Jones News

English National Opera has been having a hard time with Don Giovanni lately. First there was Calixto Bieito's groggy, pastel-coloured nightmare (who could forget the pistachio leather dentist's chair), which paled into adequacy when compared to Rufus Norris's bafflingly unlovely (and just generally baffling) vision that followed. Richard Jones's new production is in no way a failure - there's far too much intelligence here for that, as well as more than one flash of utter brilliance - but it still feels like a show as yet not fully in focus. At his best Jones can make the most startlingly revisionist concept seem like it has always been staring you in face. Here his reading intrigues, compels, but never feels fully rooted in Mozart's music-drama.