Forget Puccini and Nessun Dorma: the right opera composer for a World Cup has to be Bellini. The extreme high notes, the agility, the endurance involved as the singers spin endless melodies before firing off vocal curlicues like a gymnast swinging round and round the bars – it’s the closest there is to opera as sport. Getting the right players together at this level isn’t easy, which is surely one reason why it’s been nearly 35 years since Bellini’s final opera, I Puritani, was last staged at Covent Garden.
There’s enough fantastic singing in the Royal Opera’s new production to satisfy anyone who sees opera singers as elite athletes. But there’s more to it than that, thanks partly to the conductor Riccardo Frizza, in his house debut. Bellini’s 1835 opera may be a singer’s showpiece but it’s the orchestral detail that really makes this score shine, and Frizza lays it out superbly, creating buoyancy without ever pushing the voices and a spinning visceral momentum from Bellini’s pulsing accompaniments.
