Welcome return

Welsh National Opera’s new production of Monteverdi’s finest surviving opera, Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria, is an almost unqualified success, and one hopes that the five cities that it tours to after leaving the company’s home in Cardiff will give it the reception it deserves, so that WNO’s cutting back of its tour next spring will be only a temporary measure.

The opera is directed by David Alden, whose L’incoronazione di Poppea eight years ago was annoyingly gimmick-ridden. Il ritorno has its fair share of contemporary producers’ clichés, including Ulisse in a wheelchair for much of the time — I thought that one had really been exhausted with Glyndebourne’s lethal Idomeneo. You can’t say the setting is contemporary, because there isn’t a setting, just walls, sometimes, and the occasional large, unclassifiable object, with modern chairs. Costumes are trans-period, the majority of male ones being what used to be called spiv suits.