Thirty-odd years ago everyone was too busy listening to Vivaldi’s concertos to bother about his 90 or so operas. Two decades ago the operas began to appear in earnest on disc; now, with audiences ready to look beyond Handel for a baroque opera fix, they are reaching the stage. Bajazet is the first Vivaldi opera to be staged under the Royal Opera House’s roof, and if anyone needs persuading that this is a good idea then Adele Thomas’s production, a collaboration with Irish National Opera that has already toured Ireland for two weeks, should do the trick.
Thomas adds a bit of helpful context with an opening monologue giving the story so far, introducing the title character as “the Thunderbolt of Allah” and his captor, Tamerlano, is a warlord descended from Genghis Khan. The ensuing story mainly milks the baroque opera tropes of love, betrayal and disguise, but it’s a credit to Thomas’s insightful direction and to the six-strong cast that we remain invested in it, rooting for Gianluca Margheri’s noble-sounding Bajazet and wondering what James Laing’s thuggish, volatile Tamerlano will do next.
