Dmitri Tcherniakov has nothing to say about Il trovatore, and he says it badly. There is no doubt, after a host of productions – check at least, in these pages, past reviews of Wozzeck (12/12) and Eugene Onegin (9/09) or watch the wonderful Aix Giovanni (A/13) – that Tcherniakov has terrific talent, imagination and daring in finding unconventional routes to dramatic truth. But here he seems to have taken on board too seriously the frequent rubbishing of this opera’s plot. And because, as he explains here in an interview, nothing much happens onstage in Il trovatore save discussion about what has happened in the past and might in the future, that is all that he stages for much of the evening.

The characters – but they’re in modern dress confusingly, so they look like the ‘real’ cast – assemble in a large house (a Tcherniakov obsession) at Azucena’s bidding and prompting to ‘remember’ the events of the opera. At first they do this just by singing their parts to each other as if it was an early music rehearsal. It’s very boring. As Tcherniakov believes the small roles and the chorus have no proper role in the drama they’re banished – the chorus offstage, the bit roles (Ines, Ruiz etc) to being sung in by the soloists. By the start of Act 3 di Luna (or was it in real life Tcherniakov?) is getting bored and starts to try to direct some action as he might have wanted it, which consists mostly of sabotaging other scenes by, for example, kissing Leonora provocatively during ‘Ah si, ben mio’. Gradually everyone becomes (kind of, very kind of) ‘involved’ and some kind of sloppy text-related acting has developed by the time we’re in Manrico and Azucena’s prison.

Useless to say that Minkowski conducts an interesting performance – slow-ish but with plenty of punch – and that the cast are more than adequate and look good for their roles. All is subsumed into what feels like the naughty classroom cheat’s view of the opera. The strong basic dramaturgy that habitually informs this director’s work has here been sent mistakenly over the top as the first line of dramatic interest. It isn’t. The Mona Lisa has a moustache on but we’ve learnt nothing new about her.