What the opera needs to animate it, as well as orchestral textures, is great singing, and this is somewhat absent from ETO’s cast, to a quite startling extent in a couple of the main roles. There are good caricatures in smaller roles: Dodon’s two sons Guidon (Thomas Elwin) and Aphron (Jerome Knox) are done as Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum characters so brainless that they manage to kill each other in the war, and Amy J Payne is a warm-hearted nanny Amelfa. Alys Mererid Roberts is a bright, sharp-edged Cockerel. 

But not until the appearance in act two of the Queen of Shemakha as the beautiful foe of King Dodon do we get an aptly fine and sensual piece of singing from Paula Sides, and this provokes Grant Doyle’s Dodon to some knockabout comedy as he tries to respond to her wiles.

The two very different worlds of the first and second acts are not really resolved by the third act, where the impending marriage of King Dodon and Queen Shemakha is disrupted by the Astrologer, who claims the Queen as his reward for producing the Cockerel. Thereafter everything falls apart as Dodon kills the Astrologer, the Cockerel pecks Dodon to death, and the scene evaporates, leaving the resurrected Astrologer to remind us that the tale was just a dream – in this case, a rather unfortunately timed one.

Rimsky’s brilliantly precise and atmospheric music could be matched by a staging of equal precision; here in line with ETO’s much-admired track record of low-budget, audience-friendly productions, James Conway creates an effective but unsubtle splash in colourful designs by Neil Irish, lit by Rory Beaton. Gerry Cornelius’s conducting is efficient, but oddly deadpan. The chorus is excellent. Lovers of rare opera will surely want to collect this show as it tours the country; others may prefer ETO’s La Bohème.

Until May 30; englishtouringopera.org.uk