Roberto Devereux, Welsh National Opera, review: a hideous staging, but my, what singing

What a thrilling evening of five-star singing – it’s a long time since I have heard its like, and it reminded me how in all the irritable current debate over production style, we have rather lost the sense that the fundamental medium of opera’s power is the human voice.

Roberto Devereux is Donizetti’s version of the story of Elizabeth and Essex, highly romanticised and only passingly reflective of historical fact. But in the theatrical moment, it works: Salvatore Cammarano’s libretto does the business of providing the composer with strong characters and situations, as vivid in duet as they are in their showpiece arias.

As the Virgin Queen, Joyce El-Khoury gives a performance of extraordinary intensity. The music makes demands that push her to the absolute edge of her technique (especially in the ensemble that ends the second act), but she gives it everything she’s got and then some, making her final cavatina “Vivi, ingrato” something of aching sadness and beauty.

The other three principals spark off her and each other: Justina Gringyte, richly and subtly expressive as Elizabeth’s rival Sara, Duchess of Nottingham; Biagio Pizzuti, a dashingly red-blooded Italian baritone as Sara’s husband; and Barry Banks, projecting with exemplary clarity and ardour in the title-role. Carlo Rizzi conducts with terrific flair and has enormous fun with the splendid overture and its sly reference to the tune of “God save the Queen”.