Sexy, spirited, witty, a gleeful romp of the first water, Cavalli's cheerful opera received its first outing at Covent Garden in an outstanding production with an outstanding cast. Note all the superlatives: nothing less will do. Anyone in the house at Covent Garden this night who did not enjoy every moment of what passed on stage was either asleep or dead.
       And it is hard to know whom the first bouquet should go to: a brilliant performance by the scratch orchestra under Ivor Bolton's baton, the brilliant design and staging, or the cast - a first rate cast, who were obviously enjoying themselves every bit as much as the audience.
       The principals sang and acted consummately, carried along by the racy tale and music of sparkling aptness for the theme. This is one of those operas to which one would take a tyro or opera-agnostic: a converting experience, that reminds one that opera was to its original audience what high-kicking musical shows are to a more demotic taste today. For La Calisto is funny and frank; it enjoys itself with the Jove's divine lusts and what prompts them - the no less divine power of beauty - and it is great entertainment.
       We live in fine times for opera. Performers on stage and in the pit, and the designers and stage crews who create and manage the worlds in which opera's dramas unfold, are - at least in the great houses of the world metropolises - at a kind of peak. This production is an exemplification of that. It is an alembic of talents, brought together and orchestrated so that as the curtain rises the closest thing to genuine magic can occur.
       It certainly does in this production. The story turns upon a metamorphosis into a star: everything about this performance of it is stellar.
AC Grayling