Verdi’s Sicilian Vespers tells the story of the 13th-century uprising of the citizens of Palermo against occupying French forces, culminating in a massacre of the oppressors by the patriots. It still comes as a shock that in Stefan Herheim’s production, revived for the third time at the Royal Opera House by Daniel Dooner, the climactic bloody insurrection doesn’t actually take place.
Or rather it’s represented as a dream, an unrealised fantasy. At the point the church bells sound the signal, the lights are trained on the audience — a call to us to stand up to tyranny.
