Opening Wednesday 17 October, 7.00pm (9 performances)

Following from the success of Damon Albarn’s Dr Dee, multi award-winning director Rufus Norris teams up with ENO Music Director Edward Gardner in a revival of Mozart’s darkly seductive Don Giovanni. Norris’ production was described by Wall Street Journal as “A Don Giovanni for our times”.

Rufus Norris is one of the leading lights of British theatre and his relationship with ENO highlights the company’s commitment to working with creative talent from across the arts. Norris made his opera directorial debut at ENO in 2010 with Don Giovanni. In 2012, he returned to the company to direct Damon Albarn’s Elizabethan folk opera, Dr Dee – described as “dazzlingly fluid” (Daily Telegraph) and an “exquisite pageant” (Daily Mail).

Over recent years, Norris’ work has made an impact in London and New York – winning two Evening Standard Awards, two Critics’ Circle Awards, two Olivier nominations and ‘Show of the Year’ Time Out award for his revelatory production of London Road at the National Theatre. Rufus Norris’ film, Broken, opened Critics’ Week at the Cannes Film Festival and won the Grand Prix of the Odessa International Film Festival. Norris has been nominated for the Best British Newcomer award at the forthcoming BFI Film Festival and his production of Cabaret is currently touring the UK, arriving at the Savoy Theatre in early October.

Rufus Norris is joined by long-time collaborator and Tony Award-winning designer Ian MacNeil (Billy Elliot, David Alden’s Tristan and Isolde and Ariodante). The creative team is completed with costume designer Nicky Gillibrand, lighting designer Mimi Jordan Sherrin, projections designer Finn Ross and movement director Jonathan Lunn. James Burton conducts the final three performances in the run.

Mozart’s Don Giovanni was modelled on the legendary Spanish Libertine Don Juan and the real-life Venetian rake Giacomo Cassanova. The opera follows Don Giovanni, a young, arrogant, sexually prolific nobleman, whose abuse, and outrageous conduct, spirals out of control until he must pay the price for his depraved lifestyle. Rufus Norris sets the action in contemporary times and explores a theme of Don Giovanni’s magnetic and electrically charged character.

This first revival boasts many of the outstanding singers from its initial 2010 run, including Iain Paterson as the infamous lothario, with Katherine Broderick and Ben Johnson (both former Kathleen Ferrier Award-winners) as the defiled Donna Anna and her uptight fiancé Don Ottavio. Rebecca Evans and Sarah Redgwick share the role of the abandoned Donna Elvira, Darren Jeffrey is Leporello, the compulsive cataloguer of Giovanni’s sexual conquests, along with Sarah Tynan as Zerlina and Matthew Best as heaven’s ghostly avenger, theCommendatore.

Don Giovanni opens at the London Coliseum on 17 October for 9 performances – October 17, 25, 27 & November 6, 10, 15 (7.00pm) and October 20 & November 3, 17 (6.00pm)

Pre-performance talk, Saturday October 20, 4.15-5.00pm, £5/£2.50 concessions.