But the show is not entirely devoid of frills. A troupe of dancer/actors styled as statues (chalky makeup and white garb) whimsically stand in for both set and supernumeraries. They start the show seated, facing the audience, and then during the overture break off, one by one, to form a garden for the first scene, complete with statuary, fountain and benches. Later they show up as the rowdy guests at Don Giovanni’s party, dancing so wildly that the first act’s prescribed imbroglio finale makes perfect sense.

More charming, though, are a couple of tangential touches. For example, the dancers form a prancing coach to carry Zerlina for her first entrance. Of course, a peasant girl could hardly afford such a conveyance, but the device carries a sense of wedding-day fantasy: The girl feels like a princess, so why shouldn’t she imagine herself Cinderella en route to the ball?

The payoff of the all this activity with statue-people turns out, a bit predictably, to be the arrival at Don Giovanni’s supper of the Commentatore, now himself a statue. But the celebrated moment of Giovanni’s descent into hell, accomplished here without pyrotechnic effects or even so much as a trap door, provokes a genuine gasp of terror, followed by a grin of appreciation at the audacity of the effect.

It is fair, I think, to award Mr. Fischer’s staging the Wagnerian laurel of “Gesamtkunstwerk,” or unified artwork, particularly since his conducting so closely harmonizes with his visual presentation. His leadership of the Budapest orchestra emphasizes transparent textures and brisk forward movement, with a strong sense of presenting precisely what is on the page.

Mr. Fischer wrote in the program in 2011 that he was interested in the work’s connection to addiction, its preoccupation with repetition (those interchangeable gray figures) and the inability to stop. This makes for a strongly human performance, perhaps a little too human. Flaubert observed of this opera that “God’s three most beautiful creations are the sea, ‘Hamlet’ and Mozart’s ‘Don Giovanni.’” Here is where I think Mr. Fischer’s take on the work falls shortest: It makes not even a gesture toward mystery, transcendence, grandeur.

As a work of man, Mr. Fischer’s production is very fine, indeed, and absolutely worth seeing. But it lacks that one element without which this opera is not quite “Don Giovanni”: an indefinable spark of the divine.