It’s an odd sort of Rossini that Peter Hall and Vladimir Jurowski have created in this maddening production. In the pit, Jurowski erases the convivial comic and conjures up a leaner, meaner magician. Hall’s 2005 staging, now revived by Lynne Hockney, goes even further. The traditional buffa japes are excised; this is a stern tale of domestic drudgery and royal machinations.

Jurowski’s innovations are probably even more pronounced this year than they were in 2005. Now he’s armed with the period instruments of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and the results are intermittently thrilling. Once over a few flubbed entries, the overture pings out with all the considerable vibrancy that the OAE’s strings can muster. And as the opera goes on, the rawer sounds of the orchestra’s woodwinds really bite into Rossini’s whirring climaxes. It’s also worth singling out the superb Chi-Chi Nwanoku, a bass continuo with unusually characterful impact.

But time and time again you get the impression that Jurowski is conducting not with his heart (isn’t this opera subtitled The Triumph of Goodness ?), but with his head. Yes, the storm interlude fizzes with the energy of a Beethoven scherzo, but where’s the lyrical breadth and warmth?

Perhaps it’s because Hall’s staging is so uncompromising that Jurowski seems to misfire. This Cinderella, the hard-working, immaculately schooled, but ultimately charmless mezzo Ruxandra Donose, unsmilingly spars with her family in the ruined palace evoked by Hildegard Bechtler’s grand designs. She’s a sphinx-like Cinders, who clings to her credo of goodness without ever gaining our sympathy, and when it comes to the ecstatic finale she instead delivers her final flourishes with the grim resolve of a Roman gladiator who has just dispatched her final victim.

Where’s the fun in that? Well, Alessandro Corbelli’s majestically buffoonish Don Magnifico rises to the challenge, but he does it by completely ignoring the po-faced reserve of the rest of the cast, all of whom suffer from the buttoned-up personalities that this production imposes on them. Umberto Chiummo’s Alidoro (Rossini’s subsitute for the fairy godmother) delivers his big, munificent aria with smarmy haughtiness, while Maxim Mironov’s aloof Prince Ramiro badly needs to fill out his voice with some bel-canto caresses. Pietro Spagnoli’s smartly knowing Dandini starts to redress the balance, but he’s one of few bright sparks in a bizarrely sombre evening.

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