Double Bill: Zanetto/ Gianni Schicchi, Opera Holland Park, OHP, July 2012

Mascagni, friend of Puccini and composer of the hugely successful Cavalleria Rusticana, produced more than a dozen other operas. Cav was his second, and L’amico Fritz (OHP last year) the third. Now Opera Holland Park have produced a later one, Zanetto which, like Fritz, suffers from a very weak libretto. But it was gloriously sung by Janice Watson as the wealthy, celebrated, but lovelorn Silvia, and Patricia Orr as the young itinerant musician, Zanetto, who enters her apartment as if sent by fate. He needs looking after, and enquires after the fabulous Silvia, having heard of her fame and wealth. Both protagonists are fearful of love. He sings that it is better to be a dragonfly on the breeze, and although she yearns for a suitable man, this one seems to need a mother or sister, so she advises him to keep away from the famous Silvia. Such is the plot.

Zanetto and Silvia, all images OHP/ Fritz Curzon

Watson and Orr gave this dramatically flat piece a good showing, singing beautifully to the music’s charming lyricism, but what can one do with the wearisome libretto? As Zanetto turned to leave her, two birds flew into the stage rear, as if on cue, and we left this sad vignette knowing a little better why Mascagni’s operas went nowhere after a brilliant start. But we were well set-up for Puccini’s comedy that followed.

Gianni Schicchi is huge fun, though the preliminaries in this staging seemed a bit drawn out, with Buoso groaning relentlessly until his final breath. After the relatives made a right royal mess of the room searching for the will, it all suddenly changed when Jung Soo Yun as Rinuccio burst into song on the glories of Florence. His poetic phrasing was riveting, and the music swelled forth.

O mio babbino caro

As his beloved Lauretta, Anna Patalong was delightful and her O mio babbino caro emerged entirely naturally as she blocked her father’s way to stop him walking out — a pleasant change from the recent Covent Garden production where Schicchi is already outside the room and the aria is delivered directly to the audience.

This opera is perfect for a small venue such as Holland Park, and with Alan Opie as a very engaging Schicchi the three main roles carried it forward with huge wit and lyricism. The relatives were a mixed bunch, but I liked Simon Wilding in the bass role of Betto, and Carole Wilson sang a magnificently strong contralto as Zita.

Good direction by Martin Lloyd-Evans, with designs by Susannah Henry, and exquisite lighting by Colin Grenfell, made the best of both operas, to say nothing of the superb conducting by young Associate Conductor Matthew Waldren.

Performances continue until July 14 — for details click here.

La Wally, Opera Holland Park, OHP, August 2011

Act I of this opera is super, ending with Wally’s famous aria Ebben! Ne andrò lontana (Well then! I shall go far away) sung with great dramatic purpose by Gweneth-Ann Jeffers.

Wally and Stromminger, all photos Fritz Curzon

Rather than sing this as a set piece aria, she alternated beautifully between pensive moments and real power. Her stubbornly narcissistic father Stromminger, well-portrayed by Stephen Richardson, has thrown her out after making a fool of himself, throwing a punch at a young man named Hagenbach and landing flat on his back. Realising his daughter cares for Hagenbach, he stupidly insists she marry his mate Gellner, for whom she feels nothing. She has her father’s stubbornness, refuses point blank and leaves their Austrian village to live in the mountains.

That’s the end of Act I, dramatically staged by Opera Holland Park, with a wonderful shooting incident where someone holds a beer glass at arm’s length while a shot is fired shattering the glass.

Hagenbach and Wally

In Act II a year has passed and Wally’s father, a wealthy farmer, is now dead. All might be well for a marriage between Wally and Hagenbach, but things go badly wrong, and Act II loses momentum. The fact that it’s a bit confusing is illustrated by reading various synopses, which don’t agree on whether Hagenbach is now betrothed to a tavern owner named Afra. Gellner tells Wally he is, but Gellner’s a 24-carat prat whose idiotic machinations lead to Wally’s decision to marry him if he’ll kill Hagenbach, which he tries to do and fails. In the end in Act IV — yes there are four acts — Hagenbach comes into the mountains to find Wally and shouts up to her. This starts an avalanche that kills him, and Wally leaps to her death.

The libretto is based on Wilhelmine von Hillern’s tale from the Tyrolean Alps: Die Geyer-Wally (The Vulture-Wally). The rather odd name Wally is short for Wallburga, which was also the name of an English missionary, canonised on May 1, who gave her name to the term Walpurgis Nacht for the spring festival on that day. There may also have been a young woman Wallburga Stromminger, whose legend led to von Hillern’s story.

Gellner and Stromminger in Act I

The libretto is by Luigi Illica, before he started collaborating with Puccini whose theatrical sense would not have tolerated such unsympathetic characters, nor the unnecessary complexities of Act II. This is where Wally insults Afra, so Hagenbach insults Wally (but the relationship between Hagenbach and Afra is not clear, nor the extent to which the insult to Wally is fully intentional). She feels slighted so she decides to marry Gellner and have Hagenbach killed. Odd. Momentum is never quite restored after Act I, and the opera has not entered the standard repertoire despite a successful first night at La Scala in 1892. The composer, Catalani (1854–93) came from the same town as Puccini who was four and half years his junior. He was a fine musician who took over as professor of composition at the Milan conservatory after Ponchielli’s death. Greatly influenced by Wagner, he tried to match music to words, but the vocal line in this opera keeps changing and the effect is not memorable. The music is sophisticated, but perhaps unnecessarily so. For example, in Act I Wally’s friend Walter (a high soprano part, nicely sung by Alinka Kozari) launches into a song of the Edelweiss, which one might expect to be given a folk melody, but it isn’t and it’s over dramatised. Perhaps Catalani might have achieved more later, but he suffered ill health and died of TB before he was forty.

Hagenbach looked charming and was well sung by Adrian Dwyer, with Stephen Gadd performing strongly as Gellner, along with Heather Shipp as in the thankless role of Afra. Peter Robinson’s conducting was first rate, and Martin Lloyd-Evans’s production showed huge energy and commitment from everyone. I’m delighted that Holland Park has put this on, and while there are good reasons it’s not in the standard repertoire, they do a terrific job of bringing these little known operas to the public. Mascagni’s L’amico Fritz was another case in point this season, and in 2012 they will do his one-act Zanetto as part of a double bill.

See this while you can. Performances continue until August 12 — for details click here.

Francesca da Rimini, Holland Park Opera, August 2010

When I first heard an excerpt from this opera I was entranced, and wondered why, at that time, there seemed to be no complete recording. The resounding brass in Act II followed by the heroic sound of the lovers Francesca and Paolo was riveting, and I’m delighted Holland Park has given us this opportunity of witnessing the whole thing on stage.

Francesca and Paolo, all images OHP/ Fritz Curzon

The composer, Riccardo Zandonai produced most of his compositions in the early twentieth century, this one in 1914 to a libretto by Tito Ricordi, closely based on the play Francesca da Rimini by Gabriele d’Annunzio. The real Francesca was a contemporary of Dante, and appears in his Inferno. The story is essentially that Francesca is to marry one of the Malatesta brothers, the lame Gianciotto. But she is first introduced to his brother Paolo, the beautiful, whom she believes to be her future husband, and they fall instantly in love. The third brother, Malatestino, the one-eyed, is obsessed with her and jealous of both his other brothers. He eventually realises she and Paolo are in love so he upsets the entire apple cart, leading to their death at the hands of Gianciotto.

Gianciotto and Malatestino

As Paolo, Julian Gavin sang with suitably amorous force, reminding me of his excellent Cavaradossi at the ENO recently. Jeffrey Black gave us a powerfully sung Gianciotto, and Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts, whom I saw here last year as Tichon in Katya, was a convincing Malatestino. Cheryl Barker sang well as Francesca, though her acting was a bit wooden, but more on that when I deal with the direction. Anna Leese also did extremely well as Biancofiore, one of Francesca’s friends. From the pit came wonderful sounds, and the orchestra was conducted with great enthusiasm by Phillip Thomas.

There were two problems. Despite good designs by Jamie Vartan, and excellent lighting by Mark Jonathan, the direction by Martin Lloyd-Evans was weak. There was no coherence to the actions of the chorus, and Francesca seemed to adopt similar attitudes to all three men around her. In Act II she lets out a huge sound after apparently seeing Malatestino wounded, but she, like the chorus, is facing the audience and gives no indication of seeing anything special. The poor acting here must be laid partly at the foot of the director because I saw Cheryl Barker portray a wonderfully ghostly Miss Jessel in the ENO’s Turn of the Screw less than a year ago, and give a fine performance of the main role in The Makropulos Case in 2006. Those are rather odd roles of course, and as a young woman of flesh and blood I would have preferred to see a bit more life.

Paolo dies in her arms

The other problem is this opera itself. Zandonai was a very talented composer, whom Puccini favoured for completing Turandot, though his son Tonio vetoed the choice and it went to Alfano. In this opera there is no release from the tension in the music, so what ought to be wonderful moments are lost in the overall fabric, and there is no clear focus. Add to that a rather weak libretto by Ricordi, and it is understandable why the opera is not heard often. Nevertheless I very much applaud Opera Holland Park for putting it on, and am delighted to have seen it.

Performances continue until August 13 — for further information click here.

Un Ballo in Maschera, Holland Park Opera, July 2009

This Verdi opera is based on an 1833 play by French playwright Eugène Scribe (1791–1861), which in turn is loosely based on the death of King Gustav III of Sweden. He was the victim of a political conspiracy, and shot while attending a masked ball. The opera was first given in 1859, but in a different guise because the censor would not allow a king’s murder to be represented on stage, and the setting was transposed to Boston. The king was replaced by the colonial governor, renamed Riccardo, and his secretary Count Ankarström was renamed Renato. The fortune-teller Madame Arvidson (based on Ulrica Arfvidsson, the most famous fortune-teller in Swedish history) was called only by her first name, Ulrica. Legend has it that the king went to Madame Arfvidsson in disguise, as happens in the opera, and she warned him, “Beware the man with a sword you will meet this evening, for he intends to take your life”. After the king’s murder many of her clients were apparently scared away and she died in poverty.

This production by Martin Lloyd Evans, with designs by Jamie Vartan, set everything in the modern world, centred on the US Government. I found Act I a bit fussy with all the mobile phones and the rushing around, but I thought things improved later and gave a sense of reality to the drama. The key scene in the opera is the Act II midnight encounter between the king and Amelia, where they are surprised by Amelia’s husband Ankarström, and she veils her face. He has come to warn of the conspiracy, and as the king escapes he commands Ankarström to escort the veiled lady back to town without enquiring after her identity. Unfortunately the conspirators intercept them and when her veil comes away in the tussle, and Ankarström sees it is his wife, he joins the plot and the king’s fate is sealed. In this production, Amelia was disguised by sun glasses and a blond wig, rather than being veiled, and the encounter took place in the back-streets, with drug addicts and other ne’er-do-wells appearing and vanishing. Act III was back in the government building, and the scene between Ankarström and his wife, joined later by the conspirators, was very well played, with party guests entering through a metal detector. When the party was underway the guests stayed mainly behind a screen, which I thought focussed the drama well.

Rafael Rojas was to sing King Gustav (presumably the US President in this production) but being out of voice on opening night he acted the part, with David Rendall singing it beautifully from the orchestra pit, and the two of them combined their forces to perfection. Count Ankarström was Icelandic baritone Olafur Sigurdarson, whom I saw last year at Holland Park as Barnaba in La Gioconda, and the year before in L’amore dei tre Re; his voice was strong and fitted the part well, though he lost his pitch at one point. The vital role of Amelia was brilliantly sung by South African soprano Amanda Echalaz — she seems to be a coming star on the operatic stage. The page, portrayed as a young woman, was very charmingly sung by Gail Pearson, the fortune-teller by Carole Wilson, and the conspirators, Counts Ribbing and Horn by Paul Reeves and Simon Wilding. Peter Robinson conducted with great sensitivity to the singers, and I thought this was altogether a very fine Ballo.