“Don Giovanni” Arcola, Grimeborn Opera, Hackney

An ensemble that punches far above its weight, they’re currently making the first recording of the Elizabeth Jacquet de le Guerre opera Céphale et Procris they brought to Grimeborn in 2023. This Don Giovanni emphasises devilry through shadow-play and ominous doppelgangers all round. There’s Gill Jenks’ sleek costumes velveted with the dark (with a 20^th century hat for the Don); masks (like last week’s Sense & Sensibility, though with keen dramatic bite). Strikingly there’s Orlando Bishop’s puppets including the Stone Guest, where the stone puppet is manipulated by Bishop himself as his vocal shade is sung with adamantine gravitas  by Vedat Dalgiran as the revenant Commendatore. With dry ice at his appearance, this is a production revelling  in how lucid low lighting persuades you of mistaken identities and a kind of inverted Tenebrae. Lit in violets and reds (one assumes da Silva’s stagecraft, adding a table and set pieces to Bishop’s puppets), there’s even a row of candle footlights for the partying scene.

Da Silva commands as the Don, his presence burnished, menacing if not entirely psychopathic. But the sexual violence is there from the overture as he assaults Rosemary Carlton-Willis’s Donna Anna,  then kills Dalgiran’s Commendatore. Soprano Carlton-Willis’s Donna Anna is a powerful lyric soprano, affecting and blended with Don Twitchen’s Son Ottavo, who has just one opera to round out his dramatically-outclassed nobility. Musically though he’s a sympathetic tenor, able in his role to ascend notes above the male company.

Each different from both Helen May’s coloratura and fleet Donna Elvira, and German soprano Anna-Luise Wagner’s delightfully flirty Zerlina with a light sometimes stratospheric tessitura. She’s a modern Zerlina, not above taking the seduction role herself, the low-lying bench much-used in this production. As scold to Jay Rockwell’s luckless but lean Masetto (keenly sung and looking no pushover, a bass with bass-baritonal notes), it’s clear this Zerlina outclasses him in guile. But for the last assault (dispelling any feeling this could be a mutual tryst), Zerlina here rather regrets not consummating her fling.

May is superb at lighting every flicker of her tragic obsession: from steely to outraged to melting and finally, resignation. The final chorus is omitted, and we don’t have to reflect on self-imposed fates. Elvira’s a source of comedy too, and da Silva and Flavio Lauria extract the maximum fun from her continual humiliation – worst of all when Leporello pretends to the be the Don to draw her away so the don can seduce her maid. May manages this with a look of dignity and hurt (she’s the most facially expressive of all, alongside Wagner’s delighted arousal) that softens the cruelty of Da Ponte’s and Mozart’s invention. There’s a pre-announced chair moment here and an audience member might be asked to step up. Or not.