Opera is full to the brim of single-minded transgressors, doing the forbidden thing in order to explore on our behalf what it means to be human. But none is more dedicated to his chosen path than Don Giovanni.

The anti-hero of Mozart’s 1787 opera – the most impervious to time and changing moeurs of all the thousand incarnations of the libertine who defies God and the marble statue that comes to demand his repentance – challenges Heaven as no one else ever did. As Denis de Rougemont wrote: “If the laws of morality did not exist, he would invent them in order to violate them.”

There are plenty of chances coming up to see again one of the most powerful and best-known scenes in all drama, as Giovanni is dragged to his doom by the marble statue he has joshingly invited to supper: three different productions of the opera are opening soon at English National Opera (30 September), Glyndebourne (15 October) and Northern Ireland Opera (18 November).

Though Mozart lived in an age that questioned all the tenets of established religion, the terrifying music he wrote leaves no doubt we are supposed to take the scene seriously. But why exactly is Giovanni damned? He has merely been carrying on in the same way as any lusty nobleman of his time. Any decent barrister would certainly get him off his murder rap: what he did was clearly done in self-defence. Surely being an unreliable boyfriend is not enough to earn this fate? In fact, it is in Giovanni’s rebellion and intoxicated moral nihilism that we should seek the true reasons for his downfall.