"Don't give up!" That is Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts spokesman Joe Martin's advice to people who want to attend a free presentation of one of Mozart's greatest works, the opera Don Giovanni, to be simulcast from San Francisco's War Memorial Opera House, but who missed out on getting ticket reservations.

The simulcast is set to begin at 8 p.m. June 22.

The Mondavi Center started taking reservations for the free tickets at 12:01 a.m. May 23, and by 2 p.m. that day all 1,800 seats in Jackson Hall had been spoken for, making the event one of the quickest "sellouts" in the center's five-year history, Martin said. People put in their requests online or by telephone.

Martin and others at the Mondavi Center figure some tickets will go unclaimed -- so people with reservations are being told to get to the center by 7:30 p.m. to pick up their tickets. Unclaimed tickets will then be distributed to other people on a first-come, first-serve basis, Martin said.

The San Francisco Opera is co-producing Don Giovanni with the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie of Brussels. Polish baritone Mariusz Kwiecien, described as one of the fastest-rising stars of the opera world, has the title role. Don Giovanni will be sung in Italian and presented with English supertitles, under the direction of Donald Runnicles, the San Francisco Opera's music director and principal conductor.

Martin said seven cameras, including two robotic devices, will capture the action in the War Memorial Opera House. The signal will be beamed by satellite to the Mondavi Center, UC Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall and the Center for the Arts in Santa Rosa, reaching a total audience of nearly 9,000 if all four venues are filled.

Gifts from Barbara Jackson and Anne Gray are making the simulcast possible at the Mondavi Center, and Jackson further contributed to the purchase of a high-definition digital projector for the simulcast, which will be shown on a 26-foot-by-20-foot screen, officials said.