Amina (the somnambulant of the title) is not the only sleepy-head round here. It’s a wonder, for a start, how the chorus manage to stay awake. The producer moves them from one formal line-up to another, and zombie-like in the presence of calamity or rejoicing they stand about for the most part pointlessly and without expression. From time to time objects on stage appear to crave our attention (a red chair, for instance, proclaims ‘significance’) but to very little evident purpose. And one has to face it: the story is thin, the orchestration and harmonies likewise, and there are passages in which it is hard to find any interest at all.

Perhaps it needs the live occasion – the theatre, the audience, the voices as an actual presence. I’d be surprised if there were many viewers who found at home that this worked for them. The principal singers have their merits but they are not strong enough to make magic out of this dreariness. Eva Mei is technically fluent but the voice isn’t really steady and the character is sympathetic only in a rather weakly smiling way. José Bros has a light, thin, well focused voice which he uses with some elegance but it needs a wider range of coloration; and his acting (not helped by the production) is lifeless. Giacomo Prestia cuts a dignified figure as the Count but his aria is not stylish and he, too, is a victim of the dead hand of production. Daniel Oren’s conducting does not discernibly infuse life where torpor rules.