Opera al Mare is just beginning its second week of nearly two in preparation of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s 1787 masterpiece “Don Giovanni.” This unusual three-week summer opera workshop, June 16-July 6, has made its home for two years now on the northern Italian Adriatic coast in the resort town of Cesenatico. Eleven young singers, mostly college age, are preparing “Don Giovanni” for a June 28 performance in the historic Il Teatro di Cesenatico.

Also planned are Joseph Haydn’s comic opera “La cantarina” by the younger singers July 2, an “Opera Under the Stars” concert of arias July 3; and the “American Musical Theatre Spectacular” poolside July 4 at the workshop’s home, Hotel Miramare. The brainchild of Joshua Collier, renowned tenor and founder and artistic director of Barn Opera in Brandon, the workshop reflects his unique personal style — informal, seemingly almost loose, belying an underlying precision that delivers the deep emotional power of opera. Superficially opposite is Music Director Cailin Marcel Manson, chair of vocal studies at the Longy School of Music of Bard College and music director of Barn Opera, who is precise and demanding from day one.

It is his deep understanding of the music and his ability to communicate what he wants that works so well. Holding it all together is the ubiquitous Tricia Welch, a former Vermont legislator and now Barn Opera’s long-suffering executive director. A unique ‘Don Giovanni Collier has fashioned .