Opera Review: Norma at the Royal Opera House

And that, I think, sums up what was wrong with the production and why it attracted a fair amount of booing when the directorial team came onto the stage at the end.

We'll come back to that in a moment, but first the good news: the singing and the orchestra were fantastic.

The Bulgarian soprano Sonya Yoncheva in the title role gave a stunning performance. Her pure and powerful voice was a joy to listen to and combined with a range of emotion in her acting that stretched from vulnerable to swaggering to fit the role perfectly.

There was much anguish at the Royal Opera House when the great Russian soprano Anna Netrebko dropped out of the cast a few months ago, but anyone who saw and heard the way Yoncheva rose to the challenge would not have felt in the least disappointed.

The plot of Norma is full of passion and turbulence. Set in ancient Gaul (though one would be hard pressed to notice it in this production), it centres on conflict between the Romans and the Druids. Norma, a Druid high priestess, is expected to lead her forces in a revolt against the occupying Romans.

One little problem she faces, however, is that Pollione, a leader of the Romans, happens to be a former lover and the father of her two children. Pollione, meanwhile, has fallen out of love with her and transferred his affections to Adalgisa, who is also a priestess and a friend of Norma.

So it's all a bit of a mess, but with the great Maltese tenor Joseph Calleja as Pollione and the Italian mezzo-soprano Sonia Ganassi as Adalgisa, they provide the perfect musical support for Yoncheva. Calleja's voice is not as mellow as some other tenors, but the power and stridency of his voice is perfect for the warrior/lover role.

With Antonio Pappano conducting the Covent Garden Orchestra in a manner that brings out the subtlety and beauty of Bellini's score, the whole thing adds up to a musical treat.

So what went wrong and why did the woman at the tube station get confused about Druids and Christians? And why did a sizeable proportion of the audience boo? The answer, I think, comes in the programme notes by Spanish director Alex Ollé.

Whenever I see the words "contemporary relevance" in an opera director's explanation of his vision, my heart sinks. When a mother such as Norma is on the point of killing her children through fears of what society will do to them when their origin is found out, you don't need to have a pop-up scene of a 21st century children's bedroom complete with television to show the "contemporary relevance". And you don't need a set comprising at least 500 crucifixes clicked together into a massive array of scaffolding; and you don't need the ancient Romans dressed more like Mussolini's Romans.

The children in the bedroom scene were utterly delightful and the crucifixes were very impressive, but they were enough to make anyone wonder what era we were meant to be in and what religion was being worshipped.

In his attempt to convey that wretched "contemporary relevance", Ollé has just increased the confusion. We're all bright enough to realise that any fanatical ideology can be crushing and that a Mum will be reluctant to kill her own children, without the need for a production to emphasize the contemporary relevance of it all.