The cast of Il Viaggio a Reims (photograph by Prudence Upton)

Rossini and his librettist, Luigi Balocchi, responded somewhat irreverently with a tale of travellers who make their own entertainment when they find themselves stranded in a spa hotel unable to reach the coronation in Reims. Il Viaggio was a showcase for the vocal talents of the Théâtre-Italien, its fourteen principals led by the great soprano Giuditta Pasta, and Rossini composed some of his most expansive music to set the frivolous affairs of a party of aristocrats drawn from different nations across tempestuous post-Napoleonic Europe. The work’s brilliant surface sparkles with vocal virtuosity, but this veils an underbelly of sharp political and religious satire, and clever musical caricatures of nations like Poland, Spain, and the Tirol (with a subtle evocation of yodelling).

Rossini withdrew Il Viaggio after a handful of performances, redeploying large passages of the music in his 1828 opera Le comte Ory. Although a few partial revivals took place over the next 150 years, a version of the complete opera was only reconstructed in the 1980s.

With what is superficially the flimsiest of plots ending in a hymn to the monarch, how can this operatic rarity be most effectively staged for twenty-first century audiences? David Kram and Hugh Halliday opted for a local adaptation in their 2002 VCA Opera production, in which a cast of eccentrics try to get from Melbourne to the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge in 1932. In 2004 at the Chicago Opera Theatre, director Christopher Cowell transported the action to 1865, as a party of travellers are stranded in a saloon in the American West on their way to Abraham Lincoln’s 1865 (second) inauguration.

Iconoclastic Italian director Damiano Michieletto has followed Balocchi and Rossini’s original conception by turning a mirror on contemporary society, but in this production (for Amsterdam in 2015), he transfers the action to a present-day gallery preparing for a major exhibition and sale. The idle aristocracy of 1820s Parisian salons become a self-obsessed fashionable art crowd. Michieletto declined to engage with the opera’s political commentary, despite the rich possibilities of updating Rossini and Balocchi’s scenario to reflect the contemporary state of European (dis)unity. His production culminates in a spectacular tableau vivant of François Gérard’s 1825 painting Coronation of Charles X of France, which emerges ceremoniously in slow motion (dispelling all traces of the subtle mockery in Balocchi’s libretto and Rossini’s music). By leaving the text untouched, Michieletto largely unmoors it from the action, apart from occasional stage business linked to specific lines. Instead, he creates multiple planes of reality and illusion, where historical characters encounter – and at times metamorphose into – living artworks, and interact with the everyday world of the gallery.

Coronation of Charles X of France by François Gérard, c.1827 (photograph via Wikimedia Commons)

The result is a diverting series of mostly comic sketches, perhaps less dramatically coherent than the original scenario, but ultimately both persuasive and compelling, and greeted with delight and astonishment by the opening-night audience. Warren Roberts described Il Viaggio as ‘an 1825 musical theater of the absurd’, and Rossini’s recipe for comedy relies on the juxtaposition of utter silliness with sublime vocal writing, leavened by the few numbers that evoke humanity and emotional sincerity. Michieletto adheres to this basic premise, with the addition of surreal touches. The dramatic thread of each short episode is conveyed in beautifully executed pantomime and enlivened by a constant flow of clever visual gags and coups de théâtre, which kept the stage business in constant motion until the finale. Although Michieletto’s choice of an overwhelmingly visual concept releases the audience from slavish attention to repetitive surtitles, at times the visual busyness distracted from the undeniable beauties of the music.

It is impossible to enumerate the vocal and visual highlights of the evening, but the strong ensemble cast should be congratulated on convincing acting and superb singing (from patter arias to coloratura and well-executed recitatives). Il Viaggio is at heart a singer’s opera, and the Concertato for fourteen voices is justly celebrated, performed here to thrilling effect. Australian conductor Daniel Smith, making a sensational local début, showed a fine understanding of this repertoire, with a well-judged sense of style and effective pacing throughout. He drew a sterling performance from Orchestra Victoria, featuring memorable solo playing from Lisa-Maree Amos on flute and Megan Reeve on harp, while fortepianist (and chorus master) Anthony Hunt, raised above the orchestra pit (as in Così fan tutte, though on the opposite side), provided a robust and stylistic interpretation, enriched by the odd anachronistic flourish.

Ruth Iniesta as Corinna in Il Viaggio a Reims (photograph by Jeff Busby)

Vocal honours must be awarded to the two visiting Spanish artists. As Corinna, Ruth Iniesta’s effortless lyricism and coloratura were a musical treat, nowhere more so than in the ethereal virtuosity of the opera’s extended final aria. Iniesta is a worthy successor to the sublime Pasta. Juan de Dios Mateos presented Cavalier Belfiore with charm, clarity of tone, and lithe physicality. Australian Emma Pearson and Italian Giorgio Caoduro gave distinguished and persuasive performances as the Contessa di Folleville and Don Profondo, both meeting the dramatic and vocal demands of their roles with consummate artistry.

According to Benjamin Walton, French critics were disturbed by the seductive power of Rossini’s operas to evoke ‘too much pleasure and too many emotions at the same time’. Michieletto’s assemblage of spectacle, slapstick, and solemnity in Il Viaggio a Reims created just such an experience for its delighted Melbourne audience.

Il Viaggio a Reims continues at the State Theatre, Arts Centre Melbourne until 1 June 2019, then moves to Sydney (October 24 to November 2). Performance attended: May 24.