There’s seemingly no end to the ways you can stage Mozart’s Don Giovanni.

Different times and milieu see different things in the Don: he can be a Sinatra-esque rake, an iconoclast anti-hero, a compulsive seducer, an irredeemable rapist. Mozart’s music allows a certain latitude–it can illustrate a scene, or take up an ironic distance.

In the Seattle Opera Young Artists production of Don Giovanni (through April 9, at Bellevue’s Meydenbauer Center), he’s a 1950s Eurotrash party boy with more than a hint of the talented Mr. Ripley. Krohn sings the part well, with bravado, but his Giovanni is not at the core motivated by the love of seduction. Then, the Don is a charming rogue, teasing and cajoling. Here, he reminds you a little of a Ted-Bundy-in-training, someone who’s trying to work himself up to something more. His servant Leporello is always complaining and recalcitrant, but in Erik Anstine’s hands, you sense a foreshadowing of worse to come, if the Don crosses a line that can’t be uncrossed.

Director Peter Kazaras, perhaps making financial necessity the mother of invention, supplements a set of extraordinary costumes from Candace Frank with a little scaffolding stage left and right (from set designer Donald Eastman), and projects video and stills against the back wall. The projections at best add an immediate ambiance, and at worst distract from the live action. Intense washes of color, from lighting designer Connie Yun, serve to elevate scenes from the banality of place as the characters access heights of emotion.

He’s also added a little girl (she’s not from the “Prague version” of the score the Young Artists are using) whose purpose and identity is left vague. She’s not simply a framing device, though, since she interacts with the Don and other characters. She might be the Don’s little girl, she might be his prey. (She might be a thousand things.)

I’m of two minds about her presence. You might say she activates the moral field, without defining it: Is the Don, despite all, a caring father? Is he a sexual predator? Not knowing, you can’t feel comfortable settling on a reading of the Don, one where it’s all in fun, or one where he’s a simple sociopath. (The drawback is that her identity is never disclosed because she doesn’t exist; for the plot, she’s extraneous.)

The people who do exist for the purposes of the plot are served well enough by the Young Artists cast here. Marcy Stonikas is an imposing Donna Anna, with more than enough voice to fill Meydenbauer’s auditorium–it even seems slightly preposterous that when the Don accosts her in her room in the middle of the night, her scream brings no one.  You would like to hear more dynamic nuance, but this should come throughout the run.

Her Don Ottavio (Andrew Stenson, last night) is a doormat, caught up in a pattern of appeasement. As Stonikas plays it, she only tolerates Ottavio’s presence as a means to avenge herself on Giovanni. She doesn’t bother even to humor Ottavio’s awkward attempts at romance.

Amanda Opuszunski’s Donna Elvira is a spitfire–you believe her woman-scorned side more than her relapses as the Don woos her back. She’s joined by a lively, flirtatious Zerlina (Jacqueline Bezek, a guest artist) who’s not so much innocently swept off her feet by the Don as willing to kick the tires of this wealthy admirer. She’s well-matched by her gruff beau Masetto (Adrian Rosas), who also channels the Voice of Doom as the Commendatore.

A perk in this production is Zerlina threatening Leporello with a cleaver after he’s caught impersonating the Don (while the Don works his wiles in Leporello’s outfit). Once again, there’s no firm ground to stand on–it’s not precisely a wink-and-a-nod as Zerlina terrorizes Leporello. Though Mozart’s music, conducted with brio by Brian Garman, is not particularly threatening at this point, its formal disconnect from an enraged woman stalking around waving a cleaver creates a sense that anything can happen.

The most striking thing about this production, you may find, is not the Don himself, but how his behavior deranges everyone he comes into contact with.