Film

Don Giovanni

Name: Don Giovanni
Genre: Music, Drama
Released: 1990
Cast: Samuel Ramey, Carol Vaness, Jerry Hadley, Karita Mattila, Ferruccio Furlanetto

Other titles called Don Giovanni: the 1979 film, the 1987 film, the 2000 film, the 2002 film.

James Levine's 1990 film of Mozart's opera captures the Met's star-studded cast at their peak: Samuel Ramey as the magnetic, destructive Don Giovanni; Karita Mattila's ferocious Donna Elvira; Carol Vaness's avenging Donna Anna. Three hours of music, intrigue, and moral reckoning, gorgeously sung and conducted. For anyone who wants to experience opera's greatest hit at its finest.

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you love opera for its acting as much as its singing, and want a stage production where the seduction and jealousy play out at close range.

Skip it if you find sung-through opera tiring, since at 178 minutes of recitatives and arias the pace stays deliberately operatic and never softens for newcomers.

What it asks of you: Settle in for close to three hours of sung drama that swings between light comedy and sudden darkness, with the music rarely pausing for breath.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

The Marriage of Figaro1994

Levine conducts Mozart again, with Cecilia Bartoli and a cast equally stellar. The pacing is fleet, the comedy sharper, the arias just as transcendent. A near-perfect companion piece.

But At nearly four hours, it demands the same commitment. If you're opera-curious rather than opera-committed, this may overwhelm.

La traviata1982

Placido Domingo and Ileana Cotrubas in Decca's jewel-box production. The story is simpler than Don Giovanni's, the melodies more immediately gorgeous, and the romance achingly sincere.

But If you find the Don Giovanni libretto's cavalcade of women distasteful, this portrait of a woman sacrificed to social convention may feel equally bleak.

Così fan tutte1992

The third Mozart-Levine collaboration, equally cast and conducted. A comedy about fidelity, disguise, and whether women are all the same—it's lighter than Don Giovanni but scored with genius.

But The premise (a cynical test of whether women cheat) hasn't aged well. It can feel sexist rather than satirical, depending on the production.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Don Giovanni

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Postman Pat: The Movie2014

Both explore what happens when someone evades responsibility. Don Giovanni seduces and abandons; Pat tends and nurtures. Same structural question, opposite spiritual registers.

A British children's film about a working-class man navigating small-town life and responsibility. Like Don Giovanni, it's fundamentally about what happens when someone refuses to grow up, except here it's handled with patience and love instead of condemnation.

But It's a children's film—genuinely aimed at young viewers. Adults will find it slow and its moral universe almost absurdly gentle compared to Mozart's amoral universe.

Les Contes d'Hoffmann1988

Offenbach's phantasmagoric opera about a poet destroyed by three impossible loves. Visually more inventive than most straight opera films, with Plácido Domingo a haunted romantic lead.

But It's structurally odd—more variety show than drama—and the 1989 production design may feel dated now.

Carmen1984

Lorin Maazel conducts; Julia Migenes-Johnson is a Carmen of raw sexual power. The story is simpler and bloodier than Don Giovanni's; this is opera as verismo—real, dangerous, mortal.

But The production is stagey and sometimes hammy. The pacing occasionally sags. It looks its age.

Idomeneo1983

Mozart's most ambitious opera, about a king forced to sacrifice his son to appease the gods. Grander and more tragic in scope than Don Giovanni; shows Mozart's range beyond seduction comedies.

But At nearly four hours, with three acts of unrelenting divine wrath, it's emotionally punishing. Not an easy listen.

Don Giovanni2000

Same opera, same music, but a completely opposite interpretation: instead of Giovanni as seductive force of nature, he's an architectural construction of trauma and delusion. It reframes everything you heard in the Levine version.

François Girard's radical staging, performed in the Aix-en-Provence Festival. The Don is trapped in a mental institution; every woman and man is a version of himself. Mozart's opera becomes a psychological horror film about fractured identity, guilt, and dissociation.

But The concept can overwhelm the music. If you value the clarity of Mozart's score above directorial invention, this will feel like vandalism.

A Clockwork Orange1971

Both are about the beautiful, charming seducer whose magnetism lets him evade consequences—until they do catch up. Kubrick asks what happens when society finally enforces a reckoning that Mozart's opera refuses to imagine.

Kubrick's shocking essay on charisma, power, and moral vacancy, set to Beethoven and electronic music. Alex is Don Giovanni's descendant—beautiful, violent, incapable of genuine feeling, immune to consequence until the system catches him.

But It's deeply disturbing: rape, ultraviolence, fascistic imagery. Kubrick's detachment means there's no catharsis, only dread. This is art designed to upset you permanently.