Christof Loy's production of Donizetti's most celebrated serious opera is another "new" show for the Royal Opera that started life elsewhere. That makes its dramatic shortcomings less excusable: someone from Covent Garden must have seen a performance in Düsseldorf and realised what was wrong.
In Loy's staging, Walter Scott's Scotland becomes the androgynous world of the 1920s, with not a tartan in sight. Apart from Lucia, all the women dress like men, which makes the orgy that replaces the third-act wedding feast rather confusing. Fascism lurks just below the surface and any problem is resolved with a gun. And Enrico, who wears riding boots with his evening dress, looks as though he has taken time out from making the trains run on time to sort out the Ashton family's affairs.
Donizetti's dramatic pacing is by no means faultless, yet Loy succeeds only in emphasising its problems without offering any important insights. There's no real substance to the drama, relationships are sketchy and the acting sometimes grotesquely caricatured. Promoting the role of Normanno, Enrico's faithful retainer, to that of an Iago-like conspirator complete with crippled arm and limp, is just absurd.
Musically things are better, though the orchestral playing under Evelino Pido is never spot on. The cast is half-decent and, importantly, the half that is decent includes Andrea Rost's Lucia (a second replacement after both previous choices fell by the wayside). Rost wears some dreadful dresses by designer Herbert Murauer, and her voice may not be the most characterful ever to have sung the role, but she gets around the coloratura challenges with some aplomb, especially in the mad scene, which is performed in its original scoring.
On the plus side, too, is Marcelo Alvarez's wild and woolly Edgardo, with a big and beefy sound. But the others strain too much, perhaps because Murauer's open-stage sets do nothing to project their sound into the audience. As Enrico, the usually elegant Anthony Michaels-Moore pushes his tone, as does John Relyea's creepy Raimondo, but there is real style about Peter Auty's brief appearance as Arturo.
· In rep until December 19. Box office: 020-7304 4000.
