⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Exploring neglected repertoire has long been a feature of the Garsington Opera offer. Rarely, though, can this mission have been pursued as here with such daring, élan and an outrageous determination simply to entertain. The production team bought in utterly to the vision of director Christopher Alden to park Un giorno di regno far away from the 1730s of the original conception, into a modern world of social media and 24-hour news television, secret service bodyguards and dodgy arms deals, glitzy furnishings…and even a bomb plot. It all (thankfully) distracted attention away from one of the more irritatingly daft operatic plot-lines, rooted – naturally – in complex love triangles and a central case of impostership on the part of the ‘king (of Poland) for a day’, Belfiore, on an official visit to Baron Kelbar’s residence in France.

Henry Waddington (left) as Il Barone di Kelbar | Photo credit: Julian Guidera

The zappiness of the detailed stage direction was at times so breathless that you couldn’t summon up brain space to make more lofty judgments than the observation you were having a ball. In a way, the Philharmonia Orchestra’s customary immaculate contribution (under the refreshingly non-flamboyant Chris Hopkins) served as background music to the onstage diversions, Verdi’s irrepressibly good-humoured (for the most part) early score burbling along contentedly in a Rossinian/Donizettian kind of way. Which is not to ignore the impact made by an impressive cast, led by Christine Rice (Marchesa) and Joshua Hopkins (Belfiore) – both rich of voice and winning in their stage personae. Henry Waddington (Baron) conveyed as usual a rock-solid vocal presence, matched in that regard increasingly as the evening progressed by Grant Doyle (La Rocca). The pair’s spaghetti duel (don’t ask…) was in itself worth the ticket-price. Perhaps most ear-catching was young American soprano Madison Leonard as Giulietta. She clearly has far more in her vocal and emotional armoury than Verdi demanded of her here.

The Garsington Opera Chorus may tend to get something of a passing mention in reviews, but here their regular presence onstage in itself demands more. As those secret service bodyguards in dark suits and sunshades, toting revolvers at the slightest provocation, they had plenty to get their teeth into at the dramatic level, with all manner of intricate stage manoeuvres to execute before the reward, as the opera’s denouement approached, of being allowed to get blind-drunk. Has the Garsington chorus ever sounded better?

Christine Rice as La Marchesa del Poggio | Photo credit: Julian Guidera

We had to wait patiently for the re-scheduling of this Un giorno di regno given that it was a casualty of Covid in 2020. It was worth the wait, irrespective of the precise merits of the music – whichever way you look at it, this represents a fascinating window on the fecundity of Verdi’s imagination at the age of 25. Does all the hilarity (this writer has rarely chuckled so much in an opera house) nonetheless justify Alden’s belief that comedy has the power to deliver dark truths, not least about the present state of global politics? Perhaps all those chuckles precluded that this time around… But let’s hope this production has legs. It deserves a wider audience.