Don Giovanni is regarded as one of the greatest operas of all time. It’s farcical, tender, deadly serious, spookily supernatural. Few operas dare to bounce back and forth like that. What other opera has at least one enjoyable aria or scene for every one of eight principals?  The central character is, of course, the Don himself — a quick witted love-’em-and-leave-’em type, with a trail of jilted women in his wake. But in Mozart’s opera, we get the feeling that the Don’s luck is turning sour. Don Giovanni, an arrogant, and sexually promiscuous nobleman, abuses and outrages everyone else in the cast until he encounters something he cannot kill, beat up, dodge, or outwit. Finally, everyone concludes that Giovanni has met a just end in hell — the fate that awaits all evildoers. Still, that final ensemble leaves us feeling that somehow, with Don Giovanni gone, the world isn’t quite as interesting as it used to be.

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