At the Venice Fair review

As part of its mission to revive lesser-known Classical-era operas, Bampton has long championed Antonio Salieri (1750-1825), a composer known, probably wrongly, as the jealous composer who drove Mozart to his early death. Salieri was just 21 when this work (La Fiera di Venezia) debuted at Vienna’s Burgtheater in 1772. It was an immediate success and performed frequently, before vanishing from the repertoire. Some 250 years later, Bampton presents the UK premiere.

Here, the Venice of Salieri’s time is updated to the 1950s, with playful costumes by Pauline Smith and Anne Baldwin. The opera is sung in an English translation with several intentional groaners (“I’ll find you a gondola / Then I’ll come back to ya”). If it doesn’t have depth, it is undeniably a divertissement.

The plot brings to mind any number of later operas, not least Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro. Duke Ostrogoto is an aristocrat with a wandering eye, whose best-laid plans are foiled by his supposed inferiors. As the Duke, Andrew Henley has the stuffed-shirt routine down pat, as he courts both his neglected fiancee, the Marchioness Calloandra (a lovely-voiced Sarah Chae), and Falsirena (a gutsy Ellen Mawhinney, who revels in the slapstick role). Falsirena has clearly learnt from her swindler dad, Grifagno (Philip Sheffield, a gleeful scene-stealer). Meanwhile, Belfusto (Aaron Kendall, whose ‘catalogue’ aria is a highlight) longs after Falsirena, while the garrulous Rasoio (Guy Beynon) pines for Cristallina (Iúnó Connolly, who sparkles in her first-act aria).

It all comes to a head at a masked ball, effectively staged with clever props and neatly executed dances (choreography by Karen Halliday). This scene was not marred by rain, but rather, the distant rumbles of a rock concert. Happily, the hardy Bampton performers and orchestra soldiered on, earning an enthusiastic response from the audience.

Deanery Garden, Bampton, then Westonbirt School, Gloucestershire (August 28), and St John’s Smith Square, London (September 13); bamptonopera.org