Long on confrontation and chivalric vows, short on credible characterisation, Verdi’s fifth opera Ernani was one of the composer’s greatest early successes, but these days requires a firm directorial hand and a gutsy quartet of lead singers to keep its wheels turning at speed. Fortunately that’s by and large what Buxton international festival has assembled for its new production: a swift-paced and intelligible, if still not wholly plausible, Ernani in which sterling singing is allowed to take pride of place.
Set in 16th-century Spain, but shifted to a present-day oligarchy by director Jamie Manton, the opera turns largely on questions of duty and loyalty, and on its title character’s apparent death wish. In love with Elvira and bent on revenge against the king, the aristocrat turned bandit hurtles into perilous encounters with both, and offers several times to forfeit his own life, until a pledge made in extremis to Elvira’s uncle – a rival for her hand – obliges him to commit suicide just as he’s found happiness.
