The National Academic Theater of Opera and Ballet of Kharkov is one of the oldest opera companies in Ukraine. It was founded in 1867. While at that time Ukraine was a part of Russian Empire, mainly the operas of Russian composers were staged, such as Mermaid by A. Dargomyzhsky, Life for Tsar and Ruslan and Lyudmila by Dœ. Glinka, Queen of Spades by P. Tchaikovsky.

Don Giovanni is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte. It was premiered in Estates Theatre in Prague on October 29, 1787.

Don Giovanni is widely regarded as one of the greatest pieces of music ever composed, and of the many operas based on the legend of Don Juan, Mozart's
is thought to be beyond compare. The opera was billed as dramma giocoso or "playful drama," belonging to a genre neither completely comic nor completely tragic. In the original production the actors alternated between spoken recitative and sung aria, but most modern productions use the secco-recitatives composed by Mozart in place of the spoken text.