The Stage

L’isola disabitata

Published Friday 29 October 2010 at 13:16 by George Hall

As well as being given opportunities to sing small roles and cover larger ones in the ROH’s main stage productions, the young professionals in the Jette Parker programme have the chance to shine in this full-scale staging of a rarity by Haydn. It proves a worthwhile venture from all points of view.

Elisabeth Meister (Costanza) and Anna Devin (Silvia) in L'Isola Disabitata at Linbury Studio, Royal Opera House Photo: Tristram Kenton

Haydn’s 1779 score sets a text by the leading opera librettist Metastasio against action played out on the desert island of the title. Costanza and her sister Silvia have been abandoned there, so they believe, by Costanza’s husband Gernando, and left for 13 years. In fact, Gernando was abducted by pirates and sold into slavery, from which he escapes to seek his wife in the company of his friend Enrico. It’s a simpler set-up than many of Haydn’s works, and the music itself, including an overture written in his pre-Romantic ‘storm and stress’ manner and powerful accompanied recitatives, is near the top of his operatic range.

The piece comes to the ROH for the first time in this staging by the Greek director Rodula Gaitanou. Her staging, played in Jamie Vartan’s effectively grungy and distressed set, has a couple of moments of excessive hyperactivity - the two women limp and twitch a little too much - but generally delivers the narrative and characterisations skilfully.

Elisabeth Meister’s warm-toned Costanza is an asset, nicely offset by Anna Devin’s flakier but attractively sung younger sister Silvia. Steven Ebel is a purposeful Gernando and Daniel Grice a determined Enrico. The piece comes over strongly musically, thanks to conductor Volker Krafft and the excellent Southbank Sinfonia in the pit.