Robo-Tell hits Welsh National Opera

Is there a fundamental, insuperable problem with staging Rossini’s Guillaume Tell on a budget, without the resources to conjure up the sense of scale that was part of grand opéra’s appeal and raison d’être? Take away the special effects, whip away the phantasmagorical curtain, and, as with any Hollywood blockbuster, you are left with a modest little plot whirring away at its centre. In Tell, this involves the love between Arnold and Mathilde across a national divide. It’s the struggle of the Swiss — in a time before neutrality and cuckoo clocks — against their Austrian oppressors that, along with the Alps, forms the backdrop.

Rossini’s score can occasionally seem stuck in pastoral mode, but it contains many glorious moments and is characterised by a broadness and symphonic ambition that is worlds away from some of his better-known works. It is perhaps the music, rather than the drama, that makes it a piece worth catching: never mind the famous overture; the concluding triumphant sunburst is surely one of the most thrilling moments in all opera.