The director, Hisham El-Tally, struggled with the realities of having to deal with singers who were unable to do his vision justice. His history of directing many operas here reveals that he does possess the skill to deliver coherent and more interesting results, and this was evident in the performances of Rafla and Ghanem as Pamina and Papageno, of Faizy as Azucena and of Elhamy Amin as the Sacristan in Tosca. We just needed more. The singers relied heavily on the conductor, Nayer Nagui, who drew richly textured playing from the orchestra, the strings in particular.