That Jérôme Savary is director of this Christmas 2007 Dresden production should provide due warning that this is no traditional view of Lehár’s operetta. It’s staged in modern dress, is set completely within the Pontevedrin embassy (rather than in Hanna Glawari’s villa) and has a refreshment kiosk to serve as the all-important Act 2 pavilion.

Updating classics always loses something; but that needn’t matter if sufficient insight and invention is added to compensate. I have no problem here with Hanna arriving by helicopter, and the idea of having the Act 2 Pontevedrin national festivities relayed from the homeland by television seems quite brilliant. Such things fit naturally with the updated story.

What is much less easy to stomach is the persistent attempt to be funny at all costs that begins with two characters miming before the curtain during the orchestral introduction and continues with the introduction of snatches of “J’ai deux amours”, “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” and “White Christmas”, some bizarre business with a copy of the libretto, and such mind-numbing banalities as two men dancing with Hanna, and Njegus appearing in a tutu. Not until an extended and highly colourful can-can sequence in Act 3 did things really come to life for me – as well as, judging by the dutiful applause up to that point, for the audience in the Semperoper.

The sound emerging from the orchestra pit is attractive enough. However, Günther Emmerlich’s wholesale reconstruction of Lehár’s vocal line in the part of the Ambassador is nothing short of a disgrace. Of the leading couple, Petra-Maria Schnitzer offers little special as Hanna and is inclined to sing a trifle flat. The most consistently excellent performance comes from Bo Skovhus, struggling manfully against the odds, and rightly earning the major acclaim at the final curtain.

An updated Widow will appeal to some. However, I wouldn’t dream of urging this version on anyone ahead of the Zürich version with Dagmar Schellenberger and Rodney Gilfry (ArtHaus) or the San Francisco Opera version in English (Opus Arte, 9/03) – again with Skovhus as Danilo, and with Yvonne Kenny and Angelika Kirchschlager as the leading ladies.