Nobody goes to the opera for the interval yet intervals matter. They allow breathing space, a chance to make sense of what we’re watching before plunging back into the maelstrom.

Sometimes, though, they break the spell. Verdi’s Rigoletto is Italian opera at its most tunefully delirious but it also outlines a precise anatomy of power’s corrosive effects on innocent and not so innocent lives. It lasts barely two hours yet in David McVicar’s production, first seen in 2001, there are two intervals. Given the stately pace at which audiences drag themselves back to their seats, they add a further hour to the evening, allowing much of the tension to dissipate.

Sadly that dissipation is not always held in check by what we see on stage. That may be partly because this fourth revival is directed by Daniel Dooner, rather than McVicar, who might have been less willing to let the singers fall back on such all-purpose operatic acting. Things start badly with the opening party, McVicar’s attempt to do a 16th century orgy, but the bare boobs, the strictly choreographed debauchery and the brief full frontal (male, of course) seem simultaneously offhand and over-directed. There is none of the stench of rottenness that Verdi wanted.

Things improve only intermittently. Paule Constable’s lighting imparts the right Stygian gloom on Michael Vale’s cumbersome set, while Daniel Oren’s conducting balances nicely between light and shade, intimacy and energy.

At the opera’s centre is the warped paternalism of Rigoletto. Leo Nucci has made the role his own over the last three decades and there are moments when his animal magnetism remains frighteningly intact. Yet there are also moments when his baritone sounds tired. As for acknowledging the applause at the end of an aria, that is strictly old-style.

As the Duke who sets the tragedy in motion, Francesco Meli (making his Covent Garden debut) vacillates between wan under-nourishment and ringing brightness. Put bluntly, the voice is not quite phallic enough. The best singing comes from Ekaterina Siurina. While she can’t quite make Gilda live and breathe, she has all the notes. Perhaps we can ask for no more.
Until 1 March (020 7304 4000).