Note: This column is running after the Utah Opera’s last performance of “Don Giovanni,” but many different productions of the opera are available on YouTube.

Utah Opera recently tackled one of Mozart’s most well-known operas, “Don Giovanni,” with a twist of 18th century opera and 20th century film noir. It turned out to be much like a mashup of “The Great Gatsby,” “The Godfather” and “Don Giovanni.” 

For all my usual reservations about modern takes on classic art, I was spellbound when I saw it on May 15. 

The characters mostly wore shades of black and white as they moved among 1950s shadowy street corners, streetlamps, nightclubs and a city skyline. 

It also combined incredible acting, transcendent singing and a perfectly balanced and emotive symphony. The singers sang powerful arias with flexibility and range as well — lying on the ground, fighting, embracing and, at the end, even between swallows of wine and mouthfuls of spaghetti.

Even the smallest details like the use of shadows were perfect. In Donna Anna and Donna Ottavio’s opening duet after Don Giovanni kills Donna Anna’s father (the Commendatore), their shadows grew and shrank as power dynamics changed, until the couple finally united in an embrace, swearing to destroy Don Giovanni. 

It was spellbinding. 

From the first symphonic thunder and sinuous sighs to the last desperate aria of the doomed villain, the opera is a masterpiece. It is an experience unlike any other to hear a symphonic or operatic work like that in the flesh. 

Yet every melody, no matter how bright, is stained with darkness. The overture’s sultry scales smack of seduction, like Don Giovanni slowly drawing off Zerlina’s lacy shrug; the light and frilly “party” music is broken up by angry outbursts and a strong suggestion of orgiastic excess; and underneath everything is the promise of retribution for wrongdoing. 

Giovanni’s shadow hangs over everyone — his greed, lust, cruelty, carelessness, violence and lies. He’s infectious. Donna Anna is consumed with desire for his violent death; Donna Elvira spends the opera trying to save others from Don Giovanni’s clutches even while she lusts after him.

Don Giovanni damages others, too, of course; he taints a young bride’s relationship with her new husband, and his servant, Leporello (both accomplice and as comic relief), endures all sorts of abuse for coin.

The closest person to a hero in the opera is Don Ottavio, Donna Anna’s fiancé. Yet his heroism comes in two forms: to try to sway his beloved from her single-minded and self-destructive hate, and to try to fulfill his promise to kill Don Giovanni. Ultimately, he fails at both. 

As Don Ottavio fades into the background, Donna Anna, Donna Elvira and Don Giovanni come forward as a mad trio of fury and pain and vice. That spiraling trio gains traction throughout the opera, but in the final scene, a different trio comes forward: Don Giovanni, Leporello and the Commendatore. 

And it is here that directors typically struggle to finish the story off, as was evident with director Kristine McIntyre’s two changes to the end. 

The original ending has a denouement (winding down) in which the remaining characters start restructuring their lives after Don Giovanni’s death. The ending scene has been cut out with near-regularity almost since it first ran, leaving the audience reverberating with Don Giovanni’s tortured, dying screams.

The second and more significant change was McIntyre’s decision to remove nearly all otherworldly elements in her quest for a modern film noir feel. After the Commendatore issues his final ultimatums and Don Giovanni refuses to repent seven times, Don Giovanni takes out his gun and, in a bewildering wrestling match with Leporello, dies of a gunshot wound. At the end, the spotlight comes to rest on his prone, bloody body, abandoned on the street.

The Commendatore’s ghost/statue is still present in the Utah Opera’s rendition because his final famous aria (“Don Giovanni, a cenar teco m’invitasti ...”) could not be cut without gutting the climax and infuriating the audience. However, McIntyre’s ending makes for a peculiar mix of the supernatural and the realistic. 

The events of the opera were already reaching peak pitch, with the other characters drawing closer together in their quest for revenge. It was just a matter of time before one or all of them knifed Don Giovanni in a dark alley. An ending in which Don Giovanni dies by his own hand seems to be poetic justice and ultimately rescues the other characters from destroying themselves. 

However, the more “realistic” finale has some serious difficulties. The majority of the three-hour opera is spent in exploring the earthly consequences of Don Giovanni’s actions, but the climactic aria, gives him a last chance to see the eternal consequences of his licentiousness. 

The statue, after explaining that he eats heavenly food and needs no earthly sustenance, begins with a simple introduction: “You invited me to dinner, now you know your duty. Answer me: will you come to dine with me?”

Don Giovanni brazenly accepts the invitation. (“No one will say of me that I have ever been afraid. ... My heart beats firmly. I’m not afraid; I’ll come!”), He fails to acknowledge the meaning of this invitation to a Last Supper — one of heavenly food that he cannot eat. An unrepentantly wicked man such as he cannot dine at Heaven’s table (which is why the invitation is potentially lethal and why Leporello implores Don Giovanni to decline the invitation).

This aria asks the central question. Will Don Giovanni, at the last, repent? He has been granted countless opportunities already as Donna Elvira attempted to thwart his attempts to seduce Zerlina, as he encountered Donna Anna and her grief and rage, as the noose of vengeance began to tighten around him. The statue’s ultimatums are nothing new, but they offer a new sense of urgency. Don Giovanni has nothing really to lose and everything to gain if he will only repent and change his ways, but if he commits to his path of seduction, violence and wickedness, he will have no more chances. 

He knows it is his last hour; he feels the “deadly chill,” but seven times he still shouts “No!” to entreaties to repent before the Commendatore sings with finality, “Ah, your time is up,” and disappears, after which Don Giovanni suddenly is assailed by terror and judgment. 

With the Utah Opera’s more “realistic” ending, much of this content and consideration is lost — and orthodox or unorthodox, it is worthy of thought.