Just before the premiere of Orfeo, one prospective punter wrote that he feared he would not get a seat. Nearly 400 years later, Monteverdi's opera can still pack them in, particularly when the brilliant Emmanuelle Haïm conducts her own early-music ensemble and Ian Bostridge takes the title role.
The whole idea of opera was still nascent when Orfeo was written, and it has almost none of the lengthy set-pieces the genre has come to rely on. The work is built on descriptive commentary, and a performance that does not put this across can seem very dry: too often the Styx boatman is not the only person to get sung to sleep. Here, however, that is not the case. Though billed as a concert performance, this is a kind of semi-dramatic presentation, in Italian with English surtitles, devised and lit by Aidan Lang.
The principals move around the stage, circling the players and chorus, singing without scores and acting as well. It is convincing until the moment of crisis, when Bostridge's Orpheus looks back at Carolyn Sampson's Eurydice: the hero's desperation does not come across.
Surrounded by keyboards, Haïm does have a score, but appears rarely to need it. With her encouragement and responsiveness, the players of Le Concert d'Astrée colour in the story, whether in the rustic tambourine of the ever-quickening shepherds' dances, the mournful echoes of Orpheus's lament or the fleeting chill of the harp in the prologue.
In support are the brass of Les Sacqueboutiers and a responsive British chorus. And there are no weak links in the cast, which includes several rising stars of British opera, notably Alice Coote and Christopher Maltman. But Bostridge is the focal point. This may seem like a departure for a singer still most renowned for 19th-century song, but it suits him: Monteverdi was attentive to text, and few communicate words more effectively than Bostridge. Though the role often lies low in the tenor range, his muscular tone never lets up. Early opera rarely sounds as involving.
· Further performance tonight. Box office: 020-7638 8891.
