LONDON — For more than 40 years, one of the easiest ways to sell an opera — any opera — to the general public has been to put the name Plácido Domingo on the posters. It works like magic. And it did again this week when the Royal Opera, Covent Garden opened a new (to British audiences) production of the little-known and little-thought-of early Verdi work “I Due Foscari.” Mr. Domingo’s fans turned out in force. Knowing that they would, the Garden raised its ticket prices to the highest of the autumn season; cashing in on a continuing phenomenon.
Sad to say, however, Tuesday’s opening night threw doubt on how much longer the phenomenon can last. It’s been five years since Mr. Domingo, 73, gave up on strenuous, high-lying tenor roles in favor of more comfortable baritone ones. And although he is still universally admired as a great artist who brings a lifetime’s experience to anything he does, he’s limited by what his voice can manage.
In the case of “Due Foscari” the notes are there, clean and secure, shored up by technique. And it sort of works — in a production by Thaddeus Strassberger, originally put together for the Los Angeles Opera two years ago, that has been custom-built around him. But compared with the magnificence Mr. Domingo used to lay on liberally, it’s the ghost of a performance. And in truth it only works at all because he plays an aging man whose frailty is central to the plot.
The old man is Francesco Foscari, a 15th-century Venetian Doge whose power is so illusory that he can’t prevent his own son Jacopo (the second Foscari of the opera’s title) being tried and sentenced on a trumped-up charge. Prefiguring the anguished, lonely rulers caught between demands of love and duty that turn up in later Verdi operas (Simon Boccanegra or King Philip in “Don Carlos,” for example) it’s a short sing, but it calls for the ability to hold the stage in spotlighted monologues of powerful intensity. That Mr. Domingo does, with an affecting pathos.
But the voice remains a problem. Thin of texture, uniformly gray of tone, it doesn’t have the weight required for Verdi baritones. And it gets overwhelmed by other onstage voices that become the focus of attention by default.
Singing the tenor role of Jacopo, Francesco Meli has a strong voice, slightly dry, without the bell-like resonance that’s ideal in this kind of music, and too strident in his opening cavatina. But he settles down impressively into more cultivated eloquence. So does the Italian soprano Maria Agresta, who sings his wife Lucrezia with a chiseled definition that initially sounds too hard-edged but softens as the score progresses into more engaging artistry — especially when she contributes to the classic Verdian father/child encounters that emerge throughout this early work.
Much of the thanks for that, though, go to the conductor Antonio Pappano. He was heard on British radio last week lamenting the current scarcity of true dramatic Verdi voices (in contrast to a plentiful supply of agile, light Rossini singers) and regretting even more their tendency to hector rather than relax into the beauty of their own sound. You could feel him constantly encouraging his singers here to give themselves that license.
He also did a fine job of addressing problems with the score, not least its almost unrelieved immersion in the sinister solemnity of 15th-century Venetian politics. There’s very little light against the shade. But this performance found some, drawing finely nuanced colors from the orchestra and energizing Verdi’s more lugubrious passages with clean-cut rhythmic definition.
If Mr. Pappano brought the music to life, there wasn’t much he could do about the staging, which was dead on arrival: a portentous attempt at big theater unsupported by great truth. Nothing Mr. Strassberger presented here came with conspicuous commitment. It was merely decorous (with torture scenes that were risibly routine, not a scream or squirm) or decorative (fashionista costumes and a different frock for Ms. Agresta every time she came onstage). The semi-abstract set by Kevin Knight was vacuously chic in an all-purpose way that could have accommodated anything from a Ring Cycle to an edgy Hollywood awards night. The only thing about it that suggested Venice was the fact that it looked damp.
In short, this show was nothing more than gift wrap, for a gift that disappoints. On Tuesday night, of course, Mr. Domingo took his curtain to ecstatic cheers — and why not? He’s a much-loved figure who has arguably given more that anyone alive to opera audiences. We’ll always cheer him. But we’re cheering memories now, not present-day realities.
I Due Foscari. Directed by Thaddeus Strassberger. Royal Opera House, London. Through Nov. 2.