Bold and thought-provoking, this Giovanni is worth experiencing. Once.

I've experienced a lot of powerful emotions in opera houses. But never shock. Not, that is, until about 10 minutes into Longborough Festival Opera's new production of Don Giovanni, when I was recoiling with it.

By that point, the Don had violently raped three women, driven the handle of a broken squash racket into an adversary's stomach and was easing his victim's bloody entrails out in an almost loving caress while singing his first aria. In English. (Which was almost as shocking as everything else.) The men in the locker room health club where this was all set were turning complicit blind eyes, casually loafing in their terrycloth dressing gowns while groping the professionally-dressed female assistants who kept popping in to try to get them to focus on some work.

Longborough, the little company that defied expectations to become a Wagnerian powerhouse, has always made the point that it's not the typical country house opera. But they really threw down the gauntlet with this highly topical interpretation steeped in gender politics and rebellion against the patriarchy. At first I thought we were slamming Harvey Weinstein and celebrating #MeToo, especially when the masqueraders covered their faces with giant emojis. And then Giovanni's servant Leporello (sung by Emyr Wyn Jones in probably the strongest performance of the ensemble) laid the table for the final banquet scene with hamburger and pizza boxes and we were in Donald Trump territory. The U.S. president did, after all, justify abusive things he'd said about women as "just locker room talk."

The whole thing seethed with so much hatred towards establishment men, you could have knocked me over with the proverbial feather when I found out that the director was a bloke named Martin Constantine.

Giovanni is traditionally played as loveable rogue. He is a charming seducer, and it is usually implied that the women are complicit in his seductions. They only turn on him when he leaves them, breaking their hearts. In most versions I've seen, Giovanni's early murder of the Commandatore (a father who discovers and drives off Giovanni from seducing his daughter, Anna) is a mishap he would rather have avoided. Making him a sociopath is a bold move, and no doubt a taxing one for Ivan Ludlow, who not only has to sing this Giovanni (which he does well) but do far more acting than usual (successfully; this Don is hateful).

It's an audacious choice, well executed to make its political points. This is probably the bravest production Longborough has ever put on and the first I've thought the BBC might be interested in broadcasting for the way it updates a very old ... and supposedly elitist ... art form to take on critical modern issues. But it doesn't entirely work.

No matter how blackly they painted him in Act 1, too many plot elements of Act 2 hint at Giovanni's redeeming qualities to make him all bad. (His former lover Elivra's continuing devotion and belief she can bring him to a righteous life, Giovanni's impish refusal to become a monogamist because it wouldn't be fair to all the women he's yet to give pleasure to, and ... bluntly ... Ludlow's chiseled good looks.) The locker room set gets old and is less effective in later scenes. Most problematic is the ending, where the women grab microphones, karaoke style, and exult over their victory while the men resume the gym dressing gowns that had been discarded earlier and step to the front at the last minute, seeming to say they've given the women the impression of triumph but the abusive patriarchy embodied by the Don will continue.

Don Giovanni is usually a "feel good" opera. This interpretation sent me away angry and depressed, which I'm guessing was the director's intent.

The music, sadly, doesn't fare as well as the artistic impact. In Don Giovanni, Mozart gives us some of the most sublime and joyous music in the operatic repertoire. But, in much the same way your sense of taste goes when your sinuses are blocked up, the ears were deadened here by the political hijacking of the story and its translation into English. More than any other language, the musical nature of Italian makes the words themselves part of the score. Amanda Holden's translation is clever, at times funny and tells the story well. But it can't compare to the original. "Là ci darem la mano", probably the most exquisitely seductive duet ever written, becomes prosaic and clumsy when we understand the words as something closer to a teenager's fumbling attempts than beautiful love poetry. Leporello's attempt to dissuade Elvira with a catalogue of Giovanni's conquests "Madamina, il catalogo è questo" is a playful flight of fancy in Italian. Here, it's crude and coarse.

English, like all the director's other choices, makes the story ugly. As part of the overall political statement, it works. But, sadly, it also diminishes a great work of art.

I enjoyed how this production pushed me to think. Giovanni is one of the most frequently performed operas in the world; I've seen it live at least four times and I'd assume most people in the audience have consumed multiple productions. So it makes sense for companies to try something new. I applaud Longborough's innovation. As a "one off" it was stimulating, intriguing and provoked post-performance analysis far into the evening.

But would I ever want to see it again?  No. In giving the story modern political relevance, Longborough stripped the opera of its beauty. It was a worthy experiment, but I hope they don't make a habit of this kind of thing.