Les Martyrs, Opera Rara, Royal Festival Hall, review: 'enthralling conclusion' How can one not feel a soft spot for an opera which opens with four bassoons lamenting over a drum roll and closes as the hero and heroine are thrown to the lions amid the imprecations of a baying mob? This is Les Martyrs, Donizetti's bid to write something on the grand scale which would please the exigent Parisian public of 1840. Loosely based on a tragedy by Corneille, it's a tale of early Christians facing Roman persecution, adapted by the composer from Poliuto, an opera written in Italian two years previously which had languished unperformed after falling foul of the censors. Poliuto is lean and taut: Franco Corelli and Maria Callas memorably revived it at La Scala in 1960 and Glyndebourne will present it in a new production next summer. Les Martyrs is altogether more expansive, swollen with pomp and ceremony, and orchestrated for large forces (including the now defunct ophicleide, a keyed bugle). Even though this concert performance - the first to follow a new critical edition - excluded the ballet sequences, over three hours of music were on offer, not all of it top-drawer Donizetti. But the score hits its stride in a superb third act, where an electrifying confrontational duet is succeeded by an impassioned tenor aria and a magnificent sextet à la Lucia di Lammermoor. Charged by some exuberant choral writing, a fabulously vulgar final scene as the Christians face their doom in the arena brings proceedings to an enthralling conclusion. Overall it's not as inspired as Anna Bolena or Roberto Devereux, but it's much more than a curious footnote. Here Mark Elder and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment gave it all the nobility and energy it needs, and I can't imagine it better played or conducted. The singing wasn't quite so ideal, but as good as one could reasonably hope for. The chorus thundered, Brindley Sherratt, David Kempster and Clive Bayley roared and growled as the forces of authority, and in the title role Michael Spyres capped his fine Benvenuto Cellini at ENO last summer with firm tone, flexible articulation, eloquent expression and one show-stopping top note (an E flat, at a guess). Best of all was Joyce El Khoury as Poliuto's tormented wife: once some initial cloudiness had cleared, she sang with sparkling clarity and stylistic sensitivity. What a pity that the Royal Festival Hall's acoustic still doesn't offer voices much resonance.