Il turco in Italia, Royal Opera House, review: 'clever'

Not many opera houses take the trouble to do Il turco in Italia, still fewer to keep it coming back. So kudos to Covent Garden for this revival of its 2005 production of Rossini’s early comic masterpiece, a far more sophisticated work than often acknowledged. One aspect that has made it problematic today is its portrayal of a Turk rampant in Italy, but part of the cleverness of this production is the elegant dolce vita spin that makes it all right to laugh at the contrasting attitudes to love shown as much by the stereotyped Italians as by the titular Turk.

The retro gags fly fast again the staging by Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier, revived this time by Richard Gerard Jones, with vibrant designs transplanting the action to an Italian seaside resort of the Sixties. Though the characters lose no opportunity to make their entrances via Vespa or Cinquecento, the production allows room for the plot’s more interesting layers to unfold: this is not only in musical terms the most Mozartian of Rossini’s operas, something understood by the conductor Evelino Pidò, but a work that pays tribute to one of Mozart’s greatest plot devices - the puppeteer of human emotions, embodied in the poet Prosdocimo.

Having Thomas Allen on stage again as the onstage dramatist who assists the characters in propelling their story into life certainly underlines this: one of the greatest Don Alfonsos in Covent Garden’s history, he makes the connection with the cynical philosopher in Così fan tutte very clear. He is one of two great veteran comic baritones here, the other being Alessandro Corbelli as the bumbling, put-upon and serially cuckolded old husband Don Geronio. Neither may have the tonal resources they did a decade ago, but their performances turn the evening into a master-class in operatic comedy and should not be missed.

One singer whose voice is gaining lustre is Aleksandra Kurzak, who delivers a star turn as the minx Fiorilla. Always a vivacious artist, the Polish soprano now displays complete control of her cheeky coloratura, focused all the way to the top to match her bright-eyed performance. There is also an unusually strong seconda donna: though still on Covent Garden’s young artist programme, the Irish mezzo-soprano Rachel Kelly is feisty as the gypsy Zaida. The bass Ildebrando D’Arcangelo is in virile voice as the predatory Selim, and as Don Narcisco the tenor Barry Banks has pinging top notes to complement his hilarious, Elvis-meets-Trotsky portrayal of an unlikely ladies’ man.