Straight to the heart

No powers of divination are required to explain the current epidemic of empty seats in West End theatres. But in the case of the Royal Opera's new Luisa Miller, the gaps were almost certainly caused by a bad attack of unfamiliarity.

Opera-goers like what they know, and few have ever encountered, except on CD, Verdi's rarely performed piece after Schiller, written for an ungrateful Naples in 1849.

More's the pity. Admittedly this is an opera of two halves and the first half is not too good. The tragic tale of a soldier's daughter who loves a mysterious stranger is slow to catch fire. Act 1 can sound formulaic and plodding, especially from our vantage point of knowing what the young composer would later write. But after the interval something remarkable happens, borne out by the ROH's performance, led by the ever responsive and vulnerable Barbara Frittoli as Luisa and efficiently conducted by Maurizio Benini.

It is as if, in front of our eyes (ears), Verdi has torn up the rules and suddenly decided to write from the heart. The music audibly tautens: rhythms grow complex, counterpoint appears where none existed, simple bright harmonies give way to chromatic snarls and new orchestral effects - church organ, heavenly harps, menacing kettle drum.

No wonder Luisa Miller is regarded as a key turning point in Verdi's career. In three hours we witness him make the journey from inspired novice to mature genius.

Olivier Tambosi's direction was somewhat confined by the requirements of Roland Aeschlimann's designs, best described as geometric eclectic and including two goats. A Tardis-cum-Portakabin seems to have landed on acres of vertiginous origami.

It may be a pyramid but since this is the Tyrol it is, of course, an alp. The crampon-less chorus huddled on it nervously. There were handsome moments, with nice dawn and sunset silhouettes, but it was as if the drama had been enclosed in a pretty frame.

As the work unfolded, so soloists and chorus seemed metaphorically to lose weight and limber up. The Argentinian Marcelo Alvarez (Rodolfo) sounded ardent without resorting to that irksome tenorial hectoring. Carlo Guelfi, Luisa's helpless father, has not yet made the most of the tender father-daughter relationship, but this may come, and Frittoli more than makes up. Phillip Ens was nicely icy as the villain Wurm.

In its hurtling passions and highflown drama, Luisa Miller might appear as remote from every day life as opera gets. Yet Verdi's great gift is to translate extravagant melodrama - disguise, treachery and murder - into emotional archetypes of sound. Undeterred by preposterous plots and crudely drawn characters, he exposes the raw heart of the matter and leads singers and players right there. For all its flaws, thanks to its performers this production gets there, too.

Luisa Miller