A racy new production of Mozart's Don Giovanni was loudly booed Thursday on its opening night at the London Coliseum.

Some of the first night's audience were clearly not impressed with Spanish director Calixto Bieito's contemporary update, in which Giovanni has sex in the back of a car and behind a bar. Opera's most famous womanizer is portrayed as a gun-toting lecher. Instead of being dragged down to hell in the closing scene, he is ritually stabbed to death by the characters whose lives he has defiled.

Bieito said before Thursday's English National Opera performance that he was not interested in recreating the myth of Don Juan, but only in bringing Giovanni's character to life for a contemporary audience. His interpretation hit the right mark for some members of the audience, who challenged the booers with loud cheers.

Don Giovanni was first staged by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1787. The Austrian composer's version of Don Juan is a witty seducer who both fascinates and repulses heroine Donna Anna.