Maria Stuarda, WNO/Wales Millennium Centre, review

A lone but stentorian shout of “Rubbish!” resounded from the stalls as this production of Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda came to an end. It was aimed, I trust, at a dreadful staging – and the management which commissioned it – rather than the cast, chorus and orchestra who were its innocent victims.

Let me dispatch the unpleasantness as quickly as possible. Using the same hideous black shed of a set and most of the equally ugly costumes that served for last week’s Anna Bolena, the young Austrian director Rudolf Frey has come a cropper with his inept and pretentious reading of an opera focused on the duel-to-the-death between Mary, Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I.

The drama is unproblematic and immediate; it needs no corrective help. But Frey feels he has to put his stamp on it somehow, so he comes up with the idea of a revolving box, half Mary’s, half Elizabeth’s, divided by a mirror in which each can see the other as a reflection of herself.

The concept is in itself unobjectionable, but the plot and characters are unilluminated. There is no sense of rank or regality: Elizabeth comports herself with all the dignity of a Victorian barmaid, while Mary cavorts around like a yodelling maid of the mountains, lighting up a ciggie as she reflects on her exile. Leicester brandishes a revolver when he comes to rescue Mary from execution; the chorus makes bizarre masonic gestures.

“Puerile” is the adjective that came to mind, perhaps because some lads behind me clearly thought it was meant to be funny, and tittered lamely throughout.

Graeme Jenkins conducted efficiently, and the chorus was sterling. Rebecca Afonwy-Jones made her mark as Hannah, and Gary Griffiths (Cecil), Alastair Miles (Talbot) and Bruce Sledge (Leicester) made the most of limited opportunities. As Elizabeth, Adina Nitescu (Manon Lescaut for Glyndebourne some years back) started the evening in blowzy voice, heavy with vibrato, but gradually settled.

The evening’s main redeeming feature was Judith Howarth in the title-role. One blip aside, she sang with superb technique and richly expressive phrasing, making something both moving and lovely of the two grand final scenes. Zinging top E flats were icing on the cake.

There was a shocking number of empty seats. Cassandra warns that this sort of drab production will mean even more, driving core audiences to the seductive HD cinema broadcasts.

Until October 5, then touring. Tickets: 029 2063 6464; (www.wno.org.uk)