Furtive thrills and frissons of grand passion are what the Royal Opera's revival of Gounod's Romeo et Juliette is supposed to be all about.

Gounod, writing for a bourgeois Parisian audience, turns Shakespeare's teenage lovers into a pair of Second Empire sensualists. Then there's the presence of Angela Gheorghiu and Roberto Alagna in the lead roles. Husband and wife off stage, opera's controversial "golden couple" have developed a reputation as a double act, specialising in the portrayal of great loves.

The inevitable question is whether they lived up to expectations. Regrettably, they didn't quite. Vocally they're now less than ideally matched. Alagna has pushed his voice beyond its natural lyrical capacities and his soft singing lacks the elegant finesse he once possessed. Gheorghiu continues to amaze but the dark, hedonistic beauty of her voice is perhaps more suited to Verdi than to the French repertoire.

The sexual and emotional chemistry between the pair took a long time to materialise. For the first three acts, they seemed to sing at rather than to each other. Only in the final scene was there any sense of physical or emotional intimacy.

Gounod's focus on his central couple makes the remaining roles ungrateful, though there were strong performances, notably William Dazely's Mercutio and an ebullient and sympathetic Capulet from Sorin Coliban. Charles Mackerras conducted with tremendous electricity, disguising the fact that when Gounod isn't aspiring to be sexy, he can sometimes be distressingly cute.

***** Unmissable **** Recommended *** Enjoyable ** Mediocre * Terrible