This is Verdi year, and the Royal Opera is marking the centenary of his death with a revival of Falstaff, which - although astonishing in parts - doesn't do the work justice.
The flaw lies in a gaping disparity between stage and score. Graham Vick's production - unveiled in 1999 and planned as a showpiece for the Opera House's new stage - is a gaudy, hi-tech effort, which aspires to bawdry and coarse humour. Codpiece jokes abound; the characters are sometimes pushed towards caricature; the vibrant designs don't so much dazzle as blind; and the set's platforms and lifts crank and whirr noisily, intruding on the music.
Such riotous ebullience might just work in Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor, but it sits uneasily with Verdi, who was after something more subtle, muted and profound - a celebration of life's bittersweet richness, viewed from the point of contented old age. This awkwardness is thrown into sharper relief by Bernard Haitink's interpretation, which sometimes stresses the bitter at the expense of the sweet, shading the tone of the whole towards glowing autumnal nostalgia where some might prefer a deft lightness of approach.
At its centre, however, is a Falstaff of greatness from the Italian baritone Paolo Gavanelli. There's a fatness in his voice that matches his waddling girth, a sensuality of sound and vibrancy of tone that capture the old rogue's unbreakable vitality. When the merry wives' jokes have gone too far and both his pretences and his clothes have been stripped away (making him look like an enormous rotund baby), he still asserts monumental dignity.
His teasers and tormentors, however, are unevenly cast. Simon Keenleyside's Ford is a dangerous, vulpine creature, who tracks Falstaff obsessively, exploding into his jealousy monologue with a venom that can't quite disguise the fact that his voice is fractionally too small for the role. Patricia Schuman makes Alice a smoky-toned, manipulative woman. But the young lovers are less convincing. Sally Matthews, replacing the indisposed Jenny Grahn as Nannetta, has a stroppy wilfulness way in excess of the demands of the music, which she floats with spine-tingling beauty. Steve Davislim's once exquisite tenor has thickened to a point where Fenton no longer suits him. Bernadette Manca di Nissa's Mistress Quickly is voiced with fruity indecency but is dramatically staid.
For all that, Gavanelli unquestionably makes the evening worthwhile.
• In rep until January 30. Box office: 020-7304 4000.
