“I feel I’ve seen this set before,” one longtime Houston Grand Opera subscriber said at intermission on Opening Night of Don Giovanni. She had. HGO has retained the same whirling box of a building used in its 2019 production of Mozart’s classic anti-hero opera.

Same set, same projections – some clever, some tedious, some befuddling – and Houston favorite bass-baritone Ryan McKinny’s there too, although this time as the servant Leporello instead of the Don himself.

Of course, the most important returnee was Mozart’s music and from the first notes as directed by the UK’s acclaimed Dame Jane Glover it was impossible not to be swept up in it and Lorenzo Da Ponte’s libretto filled with passion, tragedy and take-a-breath comic moments.

The orchestra was in fine form Friday night as were all the three female leads with clear carrying tones that reached all the way to the back seats of the Wortham Center. All three were rewarded with heavy applause post-performance.

Making her HGO debut, Erika Baikoff as Zerlina was a more than pleasant surprise in a role that sometimes takes a back seat to Dona Elvira and Donna Anna. She fully embodied the peasant girl on her wedding day allowing herself to be lured away by Don Giovanni, who promises her a better future than what she could have with her new husband Masetto. She, in turn, accuses Masetto (baritone Norman Garrett) of being jealous without cause (not true), while she continues to flirt with this exciting noble, but finally comes to see the Don for what he is.

Mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke, a two-time Grammy winner, was utterly convincing as Donna Elvira the noble woman who’d given herself to Don Giovanni and was almost immediately abandoned by him as he continued his incessant pursuit of other women. Both dignified and sad, she somehow against all her better judgment finds herself drawn to him, allowing herself to hope for a reconciliation. By the end, though, the pity she has for him is perhaps the most damning aspect of their relationship.

There he is, the grand seducer and one of the women he’s wronged has nothing but pity (and a remnant of love) for him.

And then there was soprano Andriana Chuchman as Donna Anna. As the opera starts, he has seduced her in her father’s — the Commendatore’s — home. In this version, enraptured, she wants Don Giovanni to stay but he’s having none of that. As he struggles to leave (faithful servant Leporello waiting below), she starts screaming which brings out her father.

The Commendatore and Don Giovanni fight and the Don fatally stabs her father. Donna Anna knows only that her father is dead — she doesn't know who did it —  and makes her longtime fiancé Don Octtavio (tenor Kang Wang) to aid in the search for her father’s killer.

Of the three female characters, Chuchman was the one with the most chemistry with bass-baritone Luca Pisaroni’s Don Giovanni. The scene where she allows him to lead her into his bedroom with the Don while suspecting/knowing what kind of man he is, captures in a few moments both his appeal and the underlying evil in it. This is a man who leaves destruction in his wake, with no aim in sight except his own gratification.

Even Donna Elvira’s maid, who above all should know the damage Don Giovanni has done with the way he treated her mistress, appears flattered by his attentions.

McKinny as Leporello has the crowd pleaser role , the servant who despises the actions of his master, but documents his seductions in a little book and enables him to continue his deceits, at one point switching clothes with him.

A highpoint, of course, is when McKinny as Leporello sings "Madamina, il catalogo è questo" – "My dear lady, this is the catalogue") to Donna Elvira tallying up the number of conquests Don Giovanni has made in several European countries.

As Houston audiences have seen in other productions (Parsifal, Salome, Rigoletto), McKinney is a good actor on stage, and coupled with the ability to project his voice well, earned some of the biggest applause at curtain time.

In the Don Ottavio role, Wang’s voice seemed a little underpowered in the first act, but he hit his stride in the second. Throughout he found himself in an impossible situation wanting to move on to marriage with Donna Anna while she puts him off saying she has to first find her father’s killer. And who remains still caught up in the attractions of the Don.

As Don Ottavio, Wang frequently cuts a pathetic figure, almost overdone in the Act II when he walks around the stage cradling  Donna Anna’s dress in his arms and buries his face in it.

Pisaroni who previously appeared in The Phoenix, Faust and The Marriage of Figaro at HGO, took on a role he has played many times as Don Giovanni. He certainly struck a romantic figure when called for, and an occasionally threatening one to his adversaries and servant.

Thanks to the lighting and set design, when the set was dark (which was often) Pisaroni stood out as the only singer costumed in blue in contrast to other characters who tended to be in black or beige. Still, even he could not overcome the graphics that whirled about him in nausea-inducing fashion as he sang one aria.  What started out as clever projections of the names of all the women Don Giovanni had slept with, devolved into sometimes meaningless distractions exuding false energies — as if the story being told wasn't enough.

Bass Patrick Guetti had an impressive outing in his HGO debut as the Commendatore. At the end in spectral form, his voice rang out through the theatre in commanding fashion.

At that end the anguished look of desperation on Don Giovanni's face was far more telling than him being consigned to the flames as many productions historically have done. Even the Commendatore retreats from view. The man who loved parties and surrounded by women was suddenly left alone to pay for his sins.

Performances continue through May 3 at 7:30 p.m. Fridays, Saturday and Wednesday and 2 p.m. Sunday at the Wortham Center, 501 Texas. Sung in Italian with projected English translation. For more information, call 713-228-6737 or visit hgo.org. $25-$210.