US Edition 
La Clemenza di Tito, Opera North, Grand Theatre, Leeds, review
Despite some excellent performances, Opera North's production of La Clemenza di Tito was another hopeless attempt to find modern relevance in Mozart's last opera, says Rupert Christiansen.
No longer regarded as merely a half-hearted throwback to a bad old world of baroque convention, Mozart’s last opera, La Clemenza di Tito, has been doggedly explored by directors hunting for ambiguous dramatic resonance and dark psychological complexities.
The trouble is that they aren’t there: however deep you dig, the plot and characters remain rooted in the ancien régime, elements in a neo-classical parable of the just ruler and the folly of passionate love. To pretend otherwise is wishful thinking, running contrary to both text and score.
For this new Opera North production, John Fulljames embarks on yet another hopeless quest for modern relevance and ends up with nothing much to show for it.
He and his designer Conor Murphy set the opera in a neutral grey box, in front of a revolving translucent screen, which variously turns opaque or reflects some indeterminate video imagery.
Costumes are Vogue-ishly cut in black and white – Giorgio Armani would charge you zillions for Tito’s divinely distressed leather jerkin – and the overall effect is to suggest a Milanese fashion house rather than the corridors of monarchical power.
This may be contemporary and chic, but it’s also weirdly empty and uninvolving, as we are given no idea why anyone is motivated to behave they way that they do. Banishing the chorus to the pit (an economy measure?) only increases the sense of something happening in a hermetically sealed capsule.
But the show looks good, and even if its pace is sabotaged by some perversely slow tempi adopted by conductor Douglas Boyd, the drama is acted out with some conviction by an excellent cast.
Annemarie Kremer isn’t quite as strikingly successful with Vitellia as she was with Norma here last year, but she negotiated the role’s technical challenges with cunning intelligence. The infatuated Sesto, interpreted here as a gloomy alienated sociopath, is smoothly and confidently sung by Helen Lepalaan, as is Paul Nilon’s poised, priggish padre of a Tito.
Henry Waddington is a stalwart Publio and Fflur Wyn a charming Servilia, but for me the biggest news of the evening is young Liverpudlian soprano Kathryn Rudge as Annio: her cleanly produced tone, supple musical phrasing, and sensitive colouring of words combine with a vividly attractive stage personality to make something special. It was at Opera North that we first encountered Alice Coote: Kathryn Rudge has the same star potential.
Until February 22, then touring to Newcastle, Belfast, Salford and Nottingham. Tickets: 0844 848 2700; operanorth.co.uk