Richard Bratby

It looks magical. The play of light and darkness; the frames and screens that shift slowly around the stage, inviting you to question each perspective.

Offenbach’s characters are cartoons, and cartoons with human eyes aren’t more sympathetic; they’re just creepy. So the closer Rice stuck to the original scenario — the more she leaned into the silliness — the better it worked.

Her Eurydice, Sarah Tynan, is wonderfully poignant and plaintive. Soraya Mafi’s singing, as Love, is as bright and pure as crystal. But really, this is Coote’s show, supported by understated orchestral playing from Harry Bicket.

Plenty there to explore, then, but with the characters reduced to living props in a vast cartoon, there was little chemistry between Tamino and Pamina, and Papageno’s jokes fell coldly into the gap between performer and surtitle (in this country, performing Die Zauberflöte in German is like amputating one of its limbs).

The most glorious singing anyone born after 1970 will ever have heard: La forza del destino reviewed.

Good is not the same as great, though, and the lack of applause as set-piece arias came and went started to feel embarrassing. Overall — like the Royal Opera’s recent Ring cycle — it fell just short of the standard to which the UK’s best-funded opera company should expect to be held.