HURN Court Opera, the company set up to provide performance opportunities for young singers, is this year staging Mozart’s dark comedy, Don Giovanni, at Christchurch Regent Centre on Tuesday 9th April, Theatre Royal, Winchester, on Thursday 11th, both at 7pm, and at Bryanston School’s Coade Hall, Blandford, on Saturday 13th at 4pm.

The cast is led by Sam Young as Don Giovanni, with Samuel Lom as his long-suffering servant, Leporello. Lizzie Ryder sings Donna Anna, with William Stevens as her father, the Commendatore, and Christchurch-born tenor Daniel Gray Bell as her fiancé, Don Ottavio.

Hannah O’Brien plays Donna Elvira, one of the women the Don has seduced and abandoned, and Tilly Goodwin plays the lively peasant girl Zerlina, with Harrison Chene-Gration as Masetto, her husband-to-be.

As always with Hurn Court Opera, the cast is young and very talented, so this is an exciting opportunity to see some of opera’s rising stars in small venues, in an opera that gives all the principals a chance to show their vocal star power.

For this production, director Joy Robinson has moved the action from the 18th century to the film industry in the early 2000s – where the issues of power and sex are as relevant as ever. Expect nods to the Me-too movement. The production will be sung in Italian with English subtitles and there is a professional orchestra.

Hurn Court Opera was set up in 2017 to provide high quality performance opportunities for young classical singers emerging from conservatoires. It also runs an annual national Singer of the Year competition and a recital series in Dorset, Wiltshire and Hampshire. See the website for more details: https://www.hurncourtopera.org/