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Hubert Zapió as Don Giovanni (credit: Frol Podlesnyi)

The final edition of Kirill Serebrennikov’s Mozart-Da Ponte trilogy at Berlin’s Komische Oper concluded on Sunday with his new production, titled Don Giovanni/Requiem. Serebrennikov is a creator with a fun, trickster-ish energy and provides twists and flips aplenty, not least in the finale, as Don Giovanni (Hubert Zapió) tumbles acrobatically towards his fiery end.

Serebrennikov works hard to relocate then abstract the opera, dispensing with moralistic framings in favour of a purgatorial journey of a soul between death and afterlife. Setting this new scheme in motion was a strikingly high-fashion funeral of Don Giovanni at the opening. Then, informed by Carl Jung’s writings on the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Serebrennikov’s narrative concept follows a sequential scheme of bardos – life, dreams, visions, then death and its realisation – guided by the siminally liminal soul of the recently departed Commandatore (Norbert Stoß). Musically, the concluding bookend marked Serebrennikov’s biggest departure. The second act, already on the long side, was made longer still with the inclusion of music from Mozart’s Requiem to mark the soul’s prolonged final departure, and underline this deathly tableaux.

It makes for a lengthy evening at the opera, but for the most part, it’s an extremely engaging one. Serebrennikov’s visual language develops in lines of intricate counterpoint. The conversation between lighting, costume, video, and movement is like watching a year in nature, sped up and condensed into a few hours: seeds of ideas grow, blossom, bear fruit, then die and are reborn in other forms. At times, this symbolic language overwhelms—the climax of the first act is a jamboree of Serebrennikov’s symbolism: skulls, dancing skeletons, writhing AI-generated, crowns, maddened dancers, the words SI and NO in neon lights. But after the fullest bloom of summer, the autumn of the second act is hushed and focused.

Other tricksterish flips also prove successful. Donna Elviro becomes Don Elviro, played by impressive male soprano Bruno de Sá. In an evening of strong acting performances, Zapió’s Giovanni – young, millennial-coded, and libidinous with implied ambivalence towards gender – meets an unusually equal partner in Leporello (Tommaso Barea), and the resulting sexual undertones of their relationships are teased out nicely by Serebrennikov. Meanwhile, Adela Zaharia’s Non mir dir provides the standout vocal moment of the night. In the pit, James Gaffigan’s musical direction is fleet-footed, if at times too present in the unforgiving acoustics of the Schiller Theater.

The visual storytelling becomes unstuck in the Requiem section. Serebrennikov’s finely balanced counterpoint becomes dominated by the blocky choral sound, and the directorial choices become blunt and baggy, as if filling time around Mozart’s marvellous music. Until then, the production is excellent.