The nation’s favourite female cleric may have retired. But the Vicar of Dibley is back, thinly disguised (well, thinly is perhaps not the right word) as the frightful Duchesse de Crackentorp in the Royal Opera’s rip-roaring new production of Donizetti’s blissfully daft military farce.
Not that Dawn French’s devotees should get too excited. The luxuriously upholstered one is on stage for just ten minutes. And, perhaps mercifully, she doesn’t sing — though she does hijack the performance, chiefly by bawling in English when everyone is speaking French (the surtitles wittily switch into French when she’s talking).
But she’s the icing on an exceedingly yummy operatic cake. Sitcom fans drawn to Covent Garden by the lure of La French may find themselves bewitched instead by the