‘Write me something meaty and dramatic.” You can imagine soprano Isabella Colbran demanding it from her lover, and later husband, Rossini. The composer duly obliged with the title role in Armida.

Armida is a sorceress, and plainly accustomed to getting her own way. She has come to Jerusalem to find Rinaldo, a Christian knight, whose life she once saved. Now she is determined to possess him, and isn’t in the least worried when Rinaldo kills a fellow knight in a duel, and has to flee. Exile has its attractions to the by now besotted Rinaldo: who wouldn’t fancy life in an enchanted garden among a bevy of nymphs? But his conscience tells him that he should return to military duties.

As an opera, Armida is very different to, say, The Barber of Seville. Written during Rossini’s so-called ‘serious’ period, when he was working in Naples, it clearly shows that the composer had quality singers and orchestral players available to him at the time. Yet this new Garsington Opera production (director Martin Duncan) points up a fascinating dichotomy: while the dramatic storyline is being played out on stage, Rossini cannot always resist a jolly tune and some sparkling instrumentation down in the pit — here played with evident relish by an on-top-form Garsington Opera Orchestra under David Parry. But the score looks forward too — towards the end, there are feelings that Verdi is not far round the corner, and there is a delicious Victorian moment when the nymphs sing Canzoni amorose (“Songs of love”) to harp accompaniment.

In a powerfully delivered performance, Jessica Pratt emphasises Almida’s Mrs Thatcher-like determination. Yet there is tenderness too: at times you do feel that she actually loves Rinaldo, anyway for a while. Meanwhile, in a vocal performance that increases in confidence and security as it progresses, Victor Ryan Robertson’s Rinaldo, at first presents an inscrutable façade, appropriate to a Crusader knight. Here indeed is a man stuck between a rock and a hard place, and as time goes on the conflict between emotion and duty becomes etched in his face.

The perhaps unintentional humour in this production comes courtesy of the set and costume design. Ashley Martin-Davis provides a psychedelic enchanted garden, mounted on three giant tables, which are laboriously pushed around by nymphs attired in lingerie that seems to have come straight out of a 1950s catalogue (complete with suspenders), aided by daft-looking male spirits dressed in stripy blue. Unforgettable — but what a shame that in this final year of opera at Garsington, the Manor’s own glorious garden hasn’t been incorporated into the design.

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