Opera UK, founded by retired businessman John Mullis, has a big name for a small shoestring outfit.
He has promised non-gimmicky opera for music lovers of Classic FM, a questionable desire but hardly a cardinal sin.
A season of Simon Boccanegra and The Merry Widow, using young voices and minimal, traditional staging, runs at Bloomsbury Theatre before going on tour.
Verdi's Boccanegra makes for a perplexing evening. Such an occluded work is never easy to bring off, even with top performers.
Here the voices were a mix of awfully good and, in one case, awful. Loïc Gugue's noble Boccanegra, Ronald Nairne's troubled Fiesco and Gediminas Varna's ardent Adorno deserve praise.
The orchestra tried hard, with a fine bass clarinet solo, but sounded out of their depth.
If a man with the chutzpah of Raymond Gubbay could fall at a comparable hurdle, Mullis has his work cut out.
.www.operauk.co.uk
Opera UK: Simon Boccanegra
The Bloomsbury Theatre
Gordon Street, WC1H 0AH
