It’s no wonder that he takes to the bottle: servant Leporello is forced to hang about outside at dead of night in his underpants while his master Don Giovanni forces himself upon Donna Anna indoors. It’s midwinter too, with patches of snow lying in the streets.

Glyndebourne on Tour’s new Don Giovanni, directed by Jonathan Kent, started life at this year’s Glyndebourne Festival. It’s a dark, almost film noir, affair, set in an Italian city in the 1950s. Sordid deeds take place in shadowy corners — full daylight occurs only once, at Masetto and Zerlina’s wedding. A most effective revolving set (designer Paul Brown) dominates the action, its huge panels of cold Italian marble adding to the unyielding atmosphere — Giovanni tellingly shoves Zerlina up against a marble wall as he attempts to rape her. Meanwhile, Leporello gets his kicks by photographing his master’s sexual activities — no doubt, he’d nowadays post the pictures on the web.

Audun Iversen’s Don is a truly repulsive character. Even in the dim lighting, you get the strong feeling that he doesn’t often bother to wash. The only way he can conquer a woman is by brute force, since he doesn’t possess a single iota of charm or chivalry. His treatment of his servant Leporello (Robert Gleadow) is reprehensible, even allowing for the fact that Leporello mucks up the moment when he swops identity with his master because he’s too sozzled to carry it off effectively.

The women, meanwhile, are all made of stern stuff. Both Donna Anna (Natasha Jouhl) and Donna Elvira (Nicole Heaston) give the impression of being redoubtable Italian ladies. But the revelation is Eliana Pretorian’s Zerlina. Pretorian, an entertainingly hard-bitten Clorinda in Cenerentola at Garsington last year, here provides a sassy characterisation, with Zerlina becoming really self-assertive as she ties Leporello to a chair, and threatens to whip him with his own belt, which she has deftly removed from his trousers. You could take this as sadomasochism, or as a welcome moment of light relief, as you please.

Musically, the women were noticeably stronger than the men on opening night at Milton Keynes, with both Giovanni and a grave Don Ottavio (Emanuele D’Aguanno) sounding strained at times. Conductor Leo McFall provided sympathetic accompaniment from the pit, in a sombre production (revival director Ashley Dean) that tells the story clearly, but does little to seduce the audience by offering any deep emotion or insight into the characters.

Don Giovanni is repeated tomorrow, Friday, with The Coronation of Poppea being staged tonight, and La Cenerentola on Saturday. Tickets 0844 871 7652 or www.ambassadortickets.com/miltonkeynes.