The Chelsea Opera Group is 58 years old now, but there is never a shortage of operas to conquer in concert dress. It could keep busy with Donizetti alone: on Saturday there was a rare chance to hear his 62nd stage work, La Favorite, performed in the original French.

Alas, no dancers appeared for that structural carbuncle the Act II ballet, a required ingredient in 1840 at the Paris Opera. And imagination had to be stretched, of course, to conjure the conflicts between love, duty, religion and sex from singers strung in front of the orchestra like a row of beans. But we had the music, glorious in chunks; we had commitment. The opera lived.

Some decent soloists, too. The mezzo Liora Grodnikaite, who starred in Massenet's Cendrillon for COG, repeated her feat of pitching her dusky voice into soprano territory; singing from memory, too (she was the only one). No vocal snaffles tripped her as Léonor, the king's mistress in 14th-century Spain, bewitched and bewildered by another admirer. Grodnikaite was radiant, perplexed, downcast, whatever the libretto asked for, though it took until her Act III travails for her vocal fire to really scorch. No problem there for the soprano Stephanie Corley, a great communicator; a pity she was locked into a relatively small part, as the confidant Ines.

The weak link among the men was Sasa Cano as Balthazar. We're told that this monk leaves Spain trembling, hard to convey if your bass voice is wrapped in a blanket and your eyes never rise from the score. But others around him were brighter: the American tenor Michael Spyres as Fernand, silvery and mostly firm, if compromised by sleepy enunciation; the King Alphonse of Stephen Gadd, as incisive as his royal red cuffs; and Andrew Mackenzie-Wicks, a persuasive Don Gaspar.

The orchestra, fairly polished, brimmed with spirit. Under the lyrical baton of Gianluca Marcianò they even found beauty when Donizetti tootles like a machine. As often with amateur choruses the men had their indecisions and bald spots, though nothing was seriously derailed. And there remained La Favorite with its highs and lows, breathing again, lilting in French. A good enough night at the concert opera.

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