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Simon Boccanegra
Grave and grey … Thomas Hampson and Hibla Gerzmava in Simon Boccanegra. Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian
Grave and grey … Thomas Hampson and Hibla Gerzmava in Simon Boccanegra. Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian

Simon Boccanegra – review

This article is more than 10 years old
Royal Opera House, London

The Royal Opera's latest revival of Elijah Moshinsky's handsome production of Simon Boccanegra is essentially a vehicle for Thomas Hampson as the eponymous Genoese doge, haunted by his past and eventually destroyed by his confrontation with it. Unsurprisingly, he offers a beautifully considered, insightful interpretation of one of Verdi's most complex baritone roles, though there are occasional imperfections within the greatness.

He never allows us to forget that Boccanegra's elevation to government coincides with catastrophic trauma: the death of his mistress and the disappearance of their child. At the start, his easy body language is that of a charismatic sensualist; later, when he arrives at the Grimaldi Palace to meet Hibla Gerzmava's Amelia, he has become stiff-backed, grave and grey, a man whose emotions, over time, are running dry. The reunion of father and daughter that follows, capped with some wondrous, soft high notes, is astonishingly done.

If Hampson is totally convincing as the private man, he is less so as the public figure. His aristocratic bearing sits at times uneasily with the idea of a plebeian leader, ranged against a patrician opposition, and he tends, in moments of authority, to fracture the vocal line. Plebe! Patrizi! is delivered with a snarl that pulls him off pitch.

Though performances of this work often stand or fall by their central performance, it should never be a one-man show, and there is much else to admire here. Ferruccio Furlanetto's agonised Fiesco contrasts nicely with Dimitri Platanias's genuinely creepy Paolo. Gerzmava sounds good, but is occasionally pushed in her upper registers, as is Russell Thomas's impulsive Adorno. And it's faultlessly conducted – one of the finest things Antonio Pappano has ever done.

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