William Tell was Rossini’s final opera, and his biggest and most ambitious. First performed in Paris in 1829, it was a work on the grandest French scale, complete with ballet, imposing choruses and ample scope for visual splendour. Staging it remains a challenge for any opera house, and Welsh National Opera’s new version, using the original French libretto, is a signal of artistic intent under David Pountney’s leadership, while the success of the production is a measure of the company’s musical and dramatic capabilities.
Pountney himself directs and WNO’s former music director Carlo Rizzi returns to conduct (the same team will also take charge of the other new Rossini production of the autumn in Cardiff, Moses in Egypt). Raimund Bauer’s designs update the action to around the time of the opera’s composition, swinging between neutral naturalism and ironic caricature. There are enough background images of icy shards and folksy prints in the costumes to give it a Swiss feel; the ballet, choreographed by Amir Hosseinpour for a group of six dancers, has a rustic touch, too. But the occupying Austrian forces wear predatory helmets, and their governor, Gesler, is played as a villain straight from central casting, shaven headed, using a wheelchair and clad in full body armour.
The score has been tactfully shortened, but the three hours of music that remain flow smoothly under Rizzi’s baton, with vivid, stirringly delivered work from the chorus and many fine individual performances. As Tell, David Kempster is touchingly humane rather than larger-than-life, the perfect foil to Clive Bayley’s Gesler, who makes the most of the character that Pountney imposes on him. As Arnold, Barry Banks gives one of the finest performances I’ve seen from him, though on the first night, Gisela Stille, who is cast as Mathilde, was unable to sing and mimed on stage while Camilla Roberts sang the role from the side. It’s altogether an achievement with which WNO should feel very satisfied.
• Until 4 October. Box office: 029-2063 6464, then touring.
