Mike Figgis's Lucrezia Borgia: a great big stinker

No one wants to field a stinker, particularly when the applications for funding by Arts Council England are in and at a crucial point of consideration. So pity, rather than condemn, English National Opera for its highly anticipated Lucrezia Borgia, directed by film veteran (but opera debutant) Mike Figgis, well known for movies such as Leaving Las Vegas. Donizetti's Renaissance Italy-set work was beautifully sung, but the staging was static. And then there were the short films, in flashback to Lucrezia's youth, that framed each act. You could see why Figgis wanted to give us Lucrezia's florid back story. But the films were so lamentable (lots of squirmy sex and lacy bosoms, with the low point being Lucrezia giving birth to what was very obviously a rubber doll) that they caused badly suppressed sniggering among the audience. All of which made one wonder whether poor Figgis (booed when he took his bow) wouldn't have been better off directing the script (ie Felice Romani's libretto) as he found it.