Off colour

Big slats of orange, burning yellows, an Adriatic in electric blue: I wish I’d bought my sunglasses to the Royal Opera’s latest revival of Il turco in Italia. Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier’s production of Rossini’s opera buffo first burst on to the Covent Garden stage in 2005, and its shrieking colours haven’t dimmed with the years. For good or bad, this is one show when you do actually come out whistling the sets (they’re by Christian Fenouillat). I was humming Agostino Cavalca’s costumes too, from gypsy confusion through bouncing fezzes to the absurd glitter of the climactic masked ball. The world created has little to do with Fellini’s black-and-white Dolce Vita, lip-smackingly conjured in the publicity, but it’s hard to shake cultural stereotypes.

Along with colour we get bouncy characterisations, mostly from veterans of the production’s previous outings. Put Sir Thomas Allen’s voice under a microscope and you’d find abrasions and blotches, the general signs of wear and tear. Look at his total performance, though, and he’s writhing with life and prancing irony as the poet Prosdocimo, notebook in hand, trying to shape the human comedy before him into his next play. Some vocal fatigue also dogs Alessandro Corbelli, but his comic acuity as that buffo regular the cuckolded husband keeps his scenes bubbling over. Watch him in action at the start of Act Two, struggling to eat spaghetti, then sparring in his bargaining duet with Ildebrando d’Arcangelo’s Selim, the insatiable Turk with the yacht, the stubble and the roving eyes. Aleksandra Kurzak’s good-time girl Fiorilla also gives us most of the necessaries: hard flirting, vocal trills and a flash of her heart right at the end.

Why, then, given these delights, do I still drag my feet and become slow to applaud? Partly because of the dutiful quality of the Royal Opera House orchestra, which follows Evelino Pidò’s baton neatly enough but only irregularly offers the sparkle the opera’s tomfoolery needs.