Florid flummery: ETO’s Il viaggio a Reims reviewed

Lightning sometimes strikes twice. English Touring Opera hit topical gold last spring when, wholly by coincidence, they found themselves touring with Rimsky-Korsakov’s Russian anti-war satire The Golden Cockerel. Now the company’s general director Robin Norton-Hale insists that their current tour of Rossini’s Il viaggio a Reims – written in 1825 to celebrate the coronation of King Charles X of France – was fixed long before this month’s events at Westminster Abbey were even a glint in the Earl Marshal’s eye.

Really? In truth, opera planning cycles generally operate in years rather than months. On the other hand, Il viaggio a Reims is an extravagant heap of dramatic (if not musical) flummery. Why would anyone who wasn’t a terminal coloratura junkie stage it without pretext? Assorted national stereotypes gather at an inn en route to the coronation in Reims. A shortage of coach horses leaves them stranded, so they throw a party right there instead.

In the words of Alan Partridge, it really is that simple, and director Valentina Ceschi does her best to jolly along the non-existent drama. Adam Wiltshire’s Bridgerton-ish period costumes are easy on the eye and there are a couple of amusing visual surprises at the ends of Acts One and Two. Meanwhile Rossini revs his engine in neutral and trundles out his huge all-star cast, one after the other, to deliver their insanely florid party pieces. ETO doesn’t really do all-star casts, but pretty much everyone did their best to make something out of the general nonsense: Lucy Hall as the peppery innkeeper, Luci Briginshaw, charmingly ditzy as a fashionista Countess, and Grant Doyle (who never seems to bring anything less than his A game) laying down velvet-voiced drollery by the yard as the Barone di Trombonok.

Susanna Hurrell, meanwhile, as the poetess Corinna, was the one character who seemed to exist in more than two dimensions: singing with unforced poise and moving with a self-possession that made the whole show seem to pause and reorient itself around her appearances.