★★★★☆
Now we know where the Wales rugby team practise their scrummaging. Clearly the forwards are shoving round the massive blocks of scenery designed by John Napier for John Caird’s very dark production of Mozart’s very dark opera.
And these foreboding black chunks of fake mausoleum masonry certainly are pushed around — if not by international rugby players, then by equally muscly stagehands. Respect! If I seem overly obsessed by the peripatetic scenery, that’s because it sets the whole tone of Caird’s 2011 production, revived by Caroline Chaney for Welsh National Opera with a very strong cast.
Funereal, sinister and enhanced by faceless hooded monks (or perhaps Grim Reapers) who come to life as the Commendatore’s statue does, the design roots the staging in a