One intriguing opera in a new venue plus three warhorses equals Cincinnati Opera’s summer season. Factor in casts featuring many of opera’s most exciting and acclaimed young singers, along with young directors and acclaimed conductors, and the formula may come up a winner.
The season kicks off with Mozart’s bad boy, Don Giovanni, the equal opportunity seducer who manages to fill his last day on earth with murder, rape, assault and bigamy, while coming on to three women. The Don is also a perverse life force whose magnetism remains irresistible to contemporary audiences. When he’s finally dragged down under, most of us would rather be wherever he is.
Mozart and his librettist Lorenzo da Ponte called Don Giovanni a “comic drama,” and CO’s production plays out on a game board, complete with trap doors. Director Tomer Zvulun returns after his acclaimed 2011 staging of The Magic Flute. The score is pure genius; Mozart’s brilliance conveys wit, wisdom and ambiguity, under the direction of Brazilian maestro Roberto Minczuk.
7:30 p.m. June 13 and 15 at Music Hall. Tickets begin at $25. cincinnatiopera.org.