If you think you could do with some spectacle, I advise you head for the Royal Albert Hall. There buy a ticket for Raymond Gubbay’s production of Carmen: a visual treat with fine musical accompaniment, if only a mite of dramatic interest.

Some of my friends are snobby about Gubbay’s Albert Hall productions ­— all pointlessly lavish crowd scenes and amplified singing. Tosh, I say. In the acoustic hell of the Hall it’s a blessing to hear anything clearly at all. Last night the sound design was impeccable. The staging is in the round but when a singer turned the opposite way I heard him pretty much as before and could pinpoint him by ear. Impressive.

Plus, there was some fine singing. Cristina Nassif’s hussey Carmen had a seductive lilt and an excellent castanet roll. John Daszak brought a plangent quality to Don José, every inch the sweet mummy’s boy out of his depth. Elizabeth Atherton’s Michaela was as wholesomely sweet as brown bread ice cream, her third act aria a little dream.

The Royal Philharmonic, under Peter Robinson, exhibited deft woodwinds and some beautifully intertwining strings.

The pictures on stage were lovely. Lots of kids (always a winner), big parades, a huddled gipsy camp, and a sweat-shop tobacco factory: all good.

Yet there was something about the way the orchestra, locked away at the auditorium’s end, never seemed to mesh with the singers; the way the chorus, padded with actors, gave you 40 people singing like 10; the way the buzz of cooling units filled every silence; the way the singers say their lines like kids dragged on stage by over-inclusive teachers. All the prettiness felt strangely lifeless, like watching a snow globe while listening to the radio.
Until 7 March (www.royalalberthall.com).