The Siege of Calais – review

Donizetti's opera premiered in 1836, a year after his greatest tragedy, Lucia di Lammermoor. Yet it had a limited career in his lifetime before disappearing for 150 years, until the ongoing Donizetti revival returned it to the modern stage. The composer himself expressed dissatisfaction with the third act, which is dropped in some contemporary performances. This provides English Touring Opera's director, James Conway, with his justification for doing the same in his company's production, though he salvages some of the cut music and reinstates it earlier in the score.

Even so, the result feels like a torso rather than a whole. The opera's original climax – with the burghers of Calais freed instead of executed by Edward III, following the intervention of his queen – brings a satisfying moral closure to the piece. More damaging is Conway's stilted direction, with its awkward crowd movement and an improbable baby wrapped in a grey blanket that is handed without conviction from character to character.

Samal Blak's designs reference the 1942-43 siege of Stalingrad rather than sticking to the 14th century, and though the ugliness of war is amply sketched, the visual details – shapeless bundles hanging from the flies, what looks like a broken sewer pipe – seem randomly chosen. What saves the evening is some fine singing, from Eddie Wade, centred and stoical as Eustachio, the mayor of Calais; Cozmin Sime as the thuggish Edoardo; Paula Sides as Eustachio's daughter-in-law, Eleonora, who is permanently at the end of her tether; and especially Helen Sherman as Eustachio's resolute son, Aurelio. Jeremy Silver conducts a capable performance, in which Donizetti's score – or at least what remains of it – holds the attention.