The continentals wisely devote the postlunch hours to siesta. Hearing Sunday afternoon’s startlingly uncoordinated performance of Beethoven’s great prison opera leads me to suggest that the Royal Opera does the same thing.

From the overture’s slapdash opening to the fortissimo mess that was the final chorus, there seemed hardly a moment when soloists, chorus, orchestra and conductor were all travelling in the same direction at the same speed.

At least there was variety. In Act I the singers mostly seemed to lag behind Antonio Pappano’s normally impeccable beat. In Act II, they often raced in front. Whatever had been said in the interval, it was too much.

Still, apart from every rhythm in the opera being as sharply etched as a mouldy cheese, what was the show like? The answer is that it might just be presentable, once the singers have stopped delivering the German dialogue like zombies advertising the merits of Mogadon, and the stage director Jürgen Flimm (or his representative on Earth) has thought of something more gripping to do with the Prisoners’ Chorus and the Act II finale than to have 60 singers standing motionless in long lines like an amateur choral society (only less together). Oh, and if someone could supply Terje Stensvold’s imposing Don Pizarro with a cigarette lighter that doesn’t need six attempts to ignite when he is trying to burn an incriminating document.

The production, which updates the story to a vaguely South American police state, is new to Britain, but has been knocking around the New York Met for years. You might guess this, not only from Robert Israel’s vast, ultra-traditional sets, but from the way that principals often seem to be caught unawares by what others on stage are doing. There’s a strong sense of an imported staging scrappily thrown together at the fagend of a long season. The botched ending, in particular, is a risible travesty of Beethoven’s great hymn to hope, conjugal love and the indestructible human spirit. I would dump those responsible in Florestan’s dungeon and throw away the key.

There are some strong individual performances. Karita Mattila has too creamily luscious a voice to be the ideal Leonore: you can’t really imagine her passing muster as a butch guard in a grim prison. But she does work up an impressive froth of histrionics in the dungeon scene.

Eric Halfvarson is a seasoned Rocco, Robert Murray makes something interestingly nasty of the milksop Jaquino, Robert Lloyd’s Don Fernando is properly commanding, and Ailish Tynan sings Marzelline with bags of energy and a deliciously incongruous Irish accent. Only Endrik Wottrich disappointed as a monotoned and nasal Florestan, though he hurled out the high notes fiercely enough.

With a bit of luck the cast will gel quickly into something more coherent and gripping than this slipshod plod. But the Royal Opera should think twice before opening another major production on a soporific Sunday afternoon.

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