Charming comic opera relies on just one gag

This slight story, which is based on a popular 19th century French play, deals with the attempts of the merry widow Karolina to draw her cousin Anezka out of her self-imposed gloomy widowhood into a new romance.

There is humour and vitality but little substance to the plot.

Everything depends on the music, which, apart from the composer's characteristic polka-infused élan, hits some remarkable moments of emotion and, in one case, tragic intensity when Jane Irwin's Anezka laments her loneliness in her second act aria.

The Scottish Opera Orchestra, under Francesco Corti, carry directors Tobias Hoheisel and Imogen Kogge's production, which overrelies on one mirror joke where the images have a life of their own, to provide the wit.

The broader comedy element is supplied by Nicholas Folwell's Bill Oddie lookalike grumbling gamekeeper Mumlai.

All the principals, Kate Valentine's Karolina, David Pomeroy's love-stricken Ladislav and particularly Jane Irwin as the romantic target, have their moments and the singing is excellent, giving full weight to Smetana's inventive range of duets, trios and quartets. The second act is full of lyrical, moving and tender moments.

The harvest festival chorus add colour and movement to a Scottish Opera production, which, if it never excites, always charms and sometimes surprises.

GORDON PARSONS