“I have to write a comic opera, and I cannot find a plot.” This is the poet Prosdocimo’s predicament early on in Rossini’s the Turk in Italy (spelled out for us at the Royal Opera House via surtitles) and the hope at this point is that when he finally finds his plot, it gets going a bit quicker than this show does.
A saucy study in stereotypes that, at times, borders on farce, Il Turco in Italia has never been as popular as Il Barbiere di Siviglia or La Cenerentola, the other two Rossini comedies Patrice Caurier and Moshe Leiser have staged for the Royal Opera in recent years. In 2005, when this production was new – a vehicle for Cecilia Bartoli – it was the first performance at this theatre.
Christian Fenouillat’s sets and Agostino Cavalca’s costumes update the story to the 1960s, which is basically an excuse to wheel a car on stage when things get slow and to have Thomas Allen’s Prosdocimo wander around the stage in a cream linen suit and a panama hat, like a cross between Aschenbach and the man from Del Monte.
It also means some stylish outfits for Aleksandra Kurzak, who, at the 2010 revival, took over the Bartoli role of the flighty Fiorilla. Four parts Sophia Loren to one part Barbara Windsor, she sings it beautifully, her creamy soprano encompassing the leaps and cascades seemingly effortlessly.
The rest of the cast is largely the same as before, too, with Ildebrando D’Arcangelo cast for both voice and looks as the irresistible Pasha and Alessandro Corbelli giving another masterclass in Italian comedic style as cuckolded Don Geronio.
Allen, of course, is an old pro, and though Barry Banks’s clarion tenor sounds a bit smudgy in the fastest passages, it is otherwise a good fit for Narciso, here a fork-bearded shoe fetishist; you won’t find many leading tenors happy to lie on their front and sing their big aria into a pair of emerald-green courts. Rachel Kelly and Luis Gomes hold their own in their supporting roles.
The conductor is Evelino Pido, who gives his singers space to breathe and shape their phrases and generally keeps things flowing. However, the long overture sounds torpid, and, unless you count the brief husband-scolding-wife duet when the violins rasp each time Fiorilla files her nails, the orchestral sound rarely grabs the attention. Maybe that’s why, even when dressed in the cheery ice-cream colours of this staging, the opera itself seems a bit vanilla.
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