The sun had just cleared the roof-line of the five-storey buildings on Via Martucci, and in the space of a few seconds its sharply angled brilliance transformed the scene like theatre lighting revealing a stage set. Each object, however mundane, was picked out by the soft yet intense glare, and invested with a glamorous air of significance and portent.

The spectators, had there been any, would no doubt have scrutinized each object thus revealed, trying to decide on its role in the spectacle about to unfold. That tree at the corner of the two streets, for example, casting a crisp shadow across the pitted black paving slabs — was it just decorative, mere scene-setting, or was it destined to play a crucial part in the drama, to become a virtual character in its own right, perhaps as the site of the famous Act Two duet of seduction and surrender familiar to every music lover?

Similarly, the buildings so insistently yet tenderly picked out by the steadily growing light — are they simply characteristic in-fill, or will each have become individually familiar, by the time the curtain finally falls, as a source of threat or refuge? The entrances look practicable, yet the facades themselves might easily be painted flats, over-compensating for their two-dimensionality with a fussy show of detail.

Other aspects of the scene seem less problematic. Those clustered rubbish bins, for example, surely hint at the agenda of this supposedly 'radical' new production. Like the ranks of cars stacked two and even three deep in Via Greco, turning it into a car park with only a slender central aisle left free for traffic, these clearly represent a message from the director to the effect that this is Naples now, a nexus of politico-socio-economic realities very different from the picturesquely generalized setting which the composer and his librettist had in mind, providing a refreshing contemporary slant on the frankly rather trite contrivances of the original concept — although the music is divine, of course.