Premiered at Rome’s Teatro Valle in 1779, Cimarosa’s breezy intermezzo comico L’italiana in Londra made his European reputation. Playing on national stereotypes (including the English love of tea), the action unfolds during a single crazy day in the lobby of Madama Brillante’s London hotel. The Genovese aristocrat Livia is living as Brillante’s guest under an alias while searching for her apparently faithless English lover, the improbably named Milord Arespingh. Two other guests, the sybaritic but dim Neapolitan Don Polidoro and the self-important Dutch merchant Sumers, have become besotted with Livia. Amid the inevitable confusions and recriminations, the worldly Brillante – a slightly upmarket Despina – uses a ‘magic stone’ to dupe the gullible Polidoro into believing that the invisible Livia is constantly with him (an idea filched from a story in Boccaccio’s Decameron). All ends happily, of course, with Livia and her Milord reunited, and Brillante and Polidoro looking forward to la dolce vita together in Naples.

‘Light and airy’ was The Post’s spot-on summary of the music when Cimarosa’s intermezzo reached London in 1788. Don’t expect Mozart’s harmonic subtlety or richness of instrumental colour. But Cimarosa was a master of operatic pacing. His melodies, often accompanied by strings alone, are deftly fashioned to the often farcical situations. The men’s arias typically ape the dignity of opera seria before descending to buffo patter. There are moments of reflective tenderness – say, in Livia’s touching Act 1 Cavatina – while Brillante’s jaunty ‘Io voglio a Napoli con vol venire’ is one of several evocations of the Neapolitan folk style. Best of all are the ‘chain’ finales, moving through a crescendo of comic chaos to a closing ‘freeze frame’.

As so often with filmed operas, the eye can’t pick up all the nuances of the action, especially when so much happens in semi-darkness. But using a revolving, abstract set (a single convex wall, with a vague suggestion of half-timbering, plus a couple of chairs and a phone box), American director RB Schlather’s modern-dress production is animated and entertaining, with some good gags (his note invokes Brian Rix’s London farces, Monty Python and Fawlty Towers). ‘Dirty and very funny’ is Schlather’s verdict on the libretto, and his zany, sexy staging (definitely post-watershed) makes his point. Schlather also remarks that the claustrophobic setting – five characters, obsessed with themselves and each other, seemingly trapped in the confines of the hotel lobby – ties in with the 2020 covid lockdown, when the production was first conceived.

Working as a close-knit team, the young cast are personable and camera-friendly, and create something individual from their stereotyped characters. All are nimble movers and use their words vividly. Entering suspended against a wall, draped in a Union Jack, the glamorous (visually and vocally) Angela Vallone, as Livia, excels both in amorous longing and fiery indignation. Her fellow soprano, the bright-toned Bianca Tognocchi, brings comic panache to the role of the knowing, seen-it-all Brillante. The three men, too, throw themselves gleefully into the general silliness. Playing Polidoro as a blingy, narcissistic rock-star-cum-gigolo, the handsome-voiced Canadian baritone Gordon Bintner threatens to steal the show whenever he appears. If your appetite has been whetted so far – and the comedy evidently went down well with the Frankfurt audience – be assured that under Leo Hussain’s rhythmically lively direction the players relish their (admittedly limited) opportunities for witty or ironic commentary.