Il Cappello di paglia di Firenze, Wexford Festival Opera, review I thought this was going to be good. Nino Rota's film scores (The Godfather, The Leopard, La dolce vita and Prova d'orchestra among them) are so brilliantly inventive and dramatically responsive that I imagined him more than capable of composing an effervescent comic opera. Il Cappello di paglia di Firenze comes with a certain reputation behind it too. Based on a French boulevard farce usually translated as An Italian Straw Hat, it follows the helter-skelter misadventures of a man on a desperate against-the-clock hunt for the titular titfer, which could save a lady's honour and allow his own wedding to go ahead. Film versions have been made by René Clair and Fernandel, and the play was revived at Chichester some years back. First performed in Palermo in 1955, Rota's adaptation went on to enjoy considerable success as a modern essay in the distinctively Italian art of opera buffa. But revived for this year's Wexford Festival, alas, it no longer cuts the mustard. Perhaps we have lost the taste for this sort of Feydeauesque foolery, in which the humour is grounded on anxieties and inhibitions we no longer share, but the problem is more fundamental than that. What really tanks the enterprise is a score which, despite all its superficial brightness and energy (and proper homage paid to Rossini and Verdi's Falstaff), merely seems to run around and jump up and down on the road to nowhere, delivering nothing melodically memorable or theatrically surprising. The overall effect is exhausting. Wexford's well-intentioned production misses by a mile: the harder everyone involved attempts to be funny, the drearier it all seems. The director Andrea Cigni doesn't help by updating the action from mid 19th century to mid 20th century and plastering the stage with colourful advertising billboards which allow no clear idea of where the different scenes are taking place. The characters gamely gurn, vamp and pratfall, but even the well-lubricated Wexford audience, usually only too ready to guffaw, could scarcely raise more than the occasional chuckle. In the pit, Sergio Alapont whizzes the orchestra efficiently through the notes, while on stage the tenor Filippo Adami as the hapless Fadinard and soprano Claudia Boyle as his bimbo fiancée acquit themselves honourably, as does the remainder of the cast. But I don't think anyone on either side of the footlights was having any fun at all. Until 1 November. Tickets: 00 353 912 2144; wexfordopera.com