It has become almost de rigueur of late to update bel canto comedies to the 1950s or early 60s. We associate the process primarily with Donizetti's L'Elisir d'Amore, though the trend was set a while ago by a series of productions of Rossini's Il Turco in Italia, the finest of which is probably Patrice Caurier and Moshe Leiser's 2005 Covent Garden staging, now in its first revival. It gracefully illuminates a comedy some have seen as being too smart for its own good.
Premiered in 1814, the piece weaves together two conceits usually considered more literary than operatic, and more 18th-century than 19th. First there is the writer in search of a work, in this case the librettist Prosdocimo, whose decision to turn life into art results in the text of the opera we are actually watching. Then there is the arrival of an outsider in Europe, whose appearance leads to an examination of its values. The stranger is the sexy but naive Turk Selim, a collector of women, smarting from the fact that his favourite has recently legged it from his harem. He soon meets his match in Fiorilla, a collector of men, who is already playing her husband Geronio off against her lover Narciso, but who always has room, somewhere, for someone else.
Caurier and Leiser sometimes lose sight of the underlying artifice, though the updating really brings home Rossini's often delighted approval of hedonistic pleasure. Christian Fenouillat's sets initially seem garish – but their brightness tellingly fades during those morning-after-the-night-before moments, when thoughts of regret and responsibility surface in the light of dawn. The scenes between Ildebrando D'Arcangelo's gambolling Selim and Aleksandra Kurzak, looking like a young Gina Lollobrigida as Fiorilla, are marvellously ribald, while the bonding between Narciso (Colin Lee) and Geronio (Alessandro Corbelli), drawn uneasily together by the common predicament of Fiorilla's infidelity, is beautifully observed.
There were a couple of musical lapses on opening night: Lee's high notes were pressured; Conductor Maurizio Benini took an age to settle after an uncharacteristically poor account of the overture. What is really fine here, however, is the sense of great singers working together as an ensemble. D'Arcangelo, above all, is mesmerising and definitive, though even he never attempts to steer the work towards a star vehicle. Through it all, Thomas Allen's Prosdocimo, watches and scribbles with the worldly wisdom of one who has seen it all before, but still finds it enthralling. Enjoy.
Until 19 April. Box office: 020-7304-4000.
