May 25: Don Giovanni in a Brooklyn loft near the Gowanus Canal, presented by a wonderful new group called LoftOpera. Outside it looks like the setting of Il Tabarro, which takes place on a barge in the Seine River. Every few minutes the lights of a passing F train on elevated tracks formed a necklace moving against the dark of night. The loft was largely sound-proofed. One external noise penetrated the walls five minutes after the Commendatore was killed. It was the siren of an emergency vehicle and was the one time I can think of where that sound entering a theater space made perfect sense.

LoftOpera was founded in 2012 by Daniel Ellis-Ferris (the producer, who also sang Masetto) and Dean Buck, the conductor of the performance. Ellis-Ferris’s sister, Brianna Maury, is general manager. They were part of the Brooklyn loft show scene, but realized no one was doing opera. Their program statement says, “LoftOpera is an effort to rebrand opera in the underground music scene in Brooklyn. We use loft venues to create immersion theater, reduced length productions of great operas. The budget is low, the excitement is high, the beer is local brew, and the music is really, really good.” According to Ellis-Ferris, “Opera, when experienced this way, is kind of punk. As in, a whole lot of sound.”

I am down with all of this, except the word “rebrand” for opera. This art form is great and very often edgy. Let’s keep marketing-speak out of it, because that creates a context of looking at opera in ways that don’t benefit it or the people who perform it. The LoftOpera performance of Don Giovanni was sensational precisely because they eschewed any effort at “relevance” and dug deep into the ideas in the words and music and found very fresh, original ways of presenting them in this unusual space, one that became part of the performance. When the Don sang “Deh viene alla finestra” (“Come to the window”) there really was one.

The costuming by Barbara Begley was contemporary but with incredible attention to character. We perfectly understood class distinctions as Leporello’s bedraggled garments set him apart from Masetto’s rustic yellow shirt and suspenders, Don Ottavio’s burgundy vest and Don Giovanni’s very smart black suit with a blood-red handkerchief in his pocket. Comparable distinctions were found in the costumes of Zerlina, Donna Elvira and Donna Anna. Leporello’s catalogue aria was illustrated with a series of women’s underwear drawn from a sack, a brilliantly original idea, brilliantly executed.

The cast was wonderful. There were some notable cuts in arias and other music, recitatives and some dances, but the integrity of the story was not severely affected. Cuts in opera, though regrettable for obvious reasons, are hardly uncommon and many major companies do them all the time.

Here was immersive theater of great originality, presented by talented and serious young people. I have seldom exited an opera performance feeling so happy.

How fitting that May 29 is the centennial of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, which is all about shaking up the status quo. WQXR and Q2 Music are devoting programming to this revolutionary work.