★★☆☆☆
Like Brexit, the flawed Simon Boccanegra was also “the people’s choice” — in his case to be Doge of Genoa — and both seem to be falling apart. Elijah Moshinsky’s grandiose 1991 staging of Verdi’s dark drama of Machiavellian medieval machinations is on its seventh revival at the Royal Opera. And, boy, it shows. The fizz has fizzled out of the melodrama, the orchestra plays fluently but largely on autopilot for the Hungarian conductor Henrik Nanasi, and the singers mostly default to the time-honoured “park and bark” style of non-acting that was allegedly banished from opera stages decades ago.
On the plus side, the Spanish baritone Carlos Álvarez is rather compelling in the title role. He looks dashing enough to be credible as a