Luis Gomes / Reviews

There are opportunities aplenty at the moment to catch rare Rossinis, with WNO taking Mosè in Egitto and Guillaume Tell on the road and a production of the latter looming at Covent Garden. While awaiting that highlight of the 2015 season, the Royal Opera House gave its Young Artists a chance to please audiences with a Linbury staging of one of the early one-acters, La scala di seta (The Silken Ladder).

Most families will recognise the scene: a wealthy relative dies, and suddenly the whole family gets interested. There is a will to be read, and everyone has high hopes for themselves. And nothing is new: the Italian poet Dante wrote his comic episode about family greed in his Divine Comedy. And centuries later the composer Giacomo Puccini set it to music, writing his hilarious short comic opera Gianni Schicchi. Schicchi is the wily Florentine brought in to resolve a problem when an all-important will cannot be found. The hopeful relatives are banking on acquiring, property, land, a mule... The character is based on a real-life fixer, Giovanni Schicchi de’ Cavalcanti.

The Royal Opera House’s latest revival of Richard Eyre’s version sees three different casts used during its run. The initial trio of Venera Gimadieva (Violetta), Samuel Sakker (Alfredo) and Luca Salsi (Germont) all pass muster on a difficult opening night: the original Alfredo Saimir Pirgu came down with a throat infection and was replaced on the day by the Australian tenor. Sakker, unsurprisingly, takes a little while to find his feet but absolutely nails his character’s pathos in the final act. In contrast, Salsi is a tour de force from soup to nuts, his acting perfectly complementing his character’s emotional arc. Russian soprano Gimadieva makes for a subtle Violetta whose impact is only truly felt from the second act onwards; her excoriating two-hander with Salsi is a no-holds-barred tearjerker which will stay long in the memory. Eyre’s production is a considerate and powerful piece. The set design is an expressive beast which ranges from the sumptuous opening party scenes to the denouement’s spartan mise en scène. Direction is fluid and punchy, especially towards the end; conversely the lighting makes a major impact on the first scene but adds comparatively little after. Down in the pit, Yves Abel conducts Verdi’s gorgeous music with verve and aplomb.

La Boheme, Tosca and Madam Butterfly all end in gloriously tear-jerking deaths of his heroines. That pattern was set by his early work Manon Lescaut, which has never attained the popularity of his later operas, yet the music is just as luscious and excellent, as the current production at the ROH attests.Radvanovsky fit the role perfectly from the start, though Antonenko seemed to take time to work his way into it. His rather melodramatic acting style seemed to be overdoing it at first, but as the story progressed and he grew ever more depressed and desperate, it fitted his grief-laden situation better and better. American bass Eric Halfvarson was also in excellent form as Manon's aristocratic old-man lover turned persecutor. Best of all, however, was the way the Covent Garden Orchestra responded to Antonio Pappano's brilliant conducting. Pappano can always be relied upon to ensure a perfect balance between singers and orchestra, but on this occasion he really let rip with a furious tempo and variations of volume which threatened at times to engulf the singers, producing a terrific sense of tension and energy throughout.Only rarely can the magnificence of Puccini's music in this opera have been brought out so effectively. My one reservation concerns some of the extravagant ideas in Jonathan Kent's production. There's nothing wrong, on this occasion, in bringing the story of sordid degradation up to date, but the settings for the third and fourth acts were utterly bewildering.