Les Vêpres Siciliennes, Royal Opera, Royal Opera House, review

Composed just after La Traviata, Les Vêpres Siciliennes represents one of the biggest jumps in Verdi’s career – an opera in five acts, designed to gratify the exigent tastes of a jaded Parisian public and its demand for extravagant spectacle and extensive ballet interludes. But given its sprawling plot, extreme vocal demands and a score of variable quality, it has been neglected and even scorned by posterity.

Set in medieval Sicily, it tells a semi-fictitious tale of rebellion against foreign occupation, pivoting on a son’s discovery that his political enemy is also his biological father. These are familiar Verdian tropes, handled so lamely and clumsily by the librettists that it is hardly surprising that for the opera’s first-ever Covent Garden production, the director Stefan Herheim and his team of dramaturgs and designers have chosen to jettison the superficial historical setting. Instead they freely and poetically explore the work in terms of its historical context and implications.

The Herheimers takes us inside the Paris Opéra of the mid-19th century, where revolutionary artists are battling backstage against the forces of royalist reaction. From the boxes, an audience watches with detached amusement and interest – they don’t take it for real, and perhaps we shouldn’t either.

Some of you may feel that this represents precisely the sort of arrogant liberty of interpretation that has become extremely unpopular among mainstream audiences, and you certainly can’t extract perfect narrative logic from the new mise-en-scène. I can only say that I found it magnificent to look at, and profoundly Verdian in its theatricality and response to the music. Others will disagree, no doubt.

But the four principal singers are indisputably excellent: Lianna Haroutounian sings with poise, sweep and warmth as the noble heroine, failing only to render the shimmy and sparkle of her final Bolero. The men are just about ideal: Bryan Hymel effortlessly navigates the high-lying tenor role, and stentorian Michael Volle and snakey Erwin Schrott could not be bettered as the double-crossing antagonists. This is first-rate casting.

The chorus raises the roof in thrilling fashion, and Antonio Pappano’s ardently committed conducting never becomes emptily hysterical: the delicacy and detail of the orchestration glows.

Never mind the production’s occasional excesses and eccentricities: executed at every artistic level with terrific flair and verve, this is grand opera at its grandest – a gorgeous visual and musical treat.

Until November 11. The performance on November 4 will be relayed live to cinemas in HD; a relay will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on November 18 Tickets: 0207 304 4000; roh.org.uk