Andrew Clements

It’s a spare, rather plain staging, and immaculately presented within its parameters. Those parameters, though, sometimes seem unnecessarily narrow.

Disappointingly, Humperdinck’s score also fails to work its magic. Sebastian Weigle’s conducting manages to be stately without ever becoming expressively expansive, and nobody really stands out among the efficient cast.

Nelsons’ gloriously comprehensive conducting, full of moments of quiet, rapt intensity and surging, tremulous excitement, superbly realised by the ROH Orchestra, is one of this new production’s biggest plusses of all.

John Fulljames’s production is playfully staged and musically adept, with Roderick Williams the quietly assertive centre of attention, but as a whole it is unconvincing.

All the real emotional intensity and dramatic engagement has to come from the pit. Antonio Pappano certainly conducts the score superbly, relishing every detail, but there needs to be passion on stage, too.

Conducting from the harpsichord, William Christie and the nine-piece orchestra become very much part of the production, with instrumentalists regularly summoned on stage.