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SEEN AND HEARD UK OPERA REVIEW
 

Opera Holland Park [3] Zandonai, Francesca da Rimini: Soloists and chorus of Opera Holland Park, City of London Sinfonia. Conductor: Phillip Thomas. Holland Park, London, 30.7.2010. (JPr)

Cheryl Barker as Francesca and Julian Gavin as Paolo il bello
 

After Verdi and Puccini - and still smarting under the revolution in opera brought about by Wagner - Italian opera was looking for a new hero and Riccardo Zandonai seemed to be the man. He was a pupil of Mascagni, a protégé of Arrigo Boito and came under the influence of the publisher Tito Ricordi. In fact it was Ricordi who adapted Gabriele D’Annunzio’s 1901 verse play to provide the libretto for what is listed as Zandonai’s ‘masterpiece’. Apparently the New Grove Dictionary of Opera calls it ‘one of the most original and polished Italian melodramas of the 20th century, [which] combines a powerful gift for Italian melody ... with an exceptional command of orchestration.’  But if this – as performed at Holland Park - is a ‘masterpiece’ then, frankly, I have no understanding of what the word means and what must the rest of his compositions be like, I wonder. By the way, this is the same D’Annunzio who influenced the Italian Fascist movement and Mussolini. Clearly there must be some of D’Annunzio’s personal ideology in an apparently blood-soaked play that translates into an opera libretto rampant with deceit, betrayal, torture and brutality - and which also goes out of its way to insult people with a disabilities.

To link this dire opera in any way to Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde is an insult to Wagner. It seems that around the time of the First World War, Italian composers were vying to write a Tristan-esque work. Here we have a familiar medieval setting, where a strong-willed woman of good birth is tricked into marrying someone she doesn’t care for, while the man she grows to love chases after her with little concern for the risk to them both. So far … so Tristan of course. In Ricordi’s adaptation, instead of Wagner’s dignified and forgiving King Marke we have the crippled Gianciotto, the elder brother of Francesca’s true love - the more handsome (read into that ‘perfect’) - Paolo. The tyrannical Gianciotto limps around as a battle-hardened warrior and when his brother, Malatestino - whose sadism increases exponentially when he loses an eye in battle - catches the other brother and his wife ‘in the act’, the opera reaches its inevitable, and long overdue, denouement when he kills them both. Like Wagner’s opera – a true masterpiece - an all-consuming passion overtakes two people with disastrous consequences but the original has the philosophical veracity, the three-dimensional characters and better music that this Zandonai pastiche lacks.

This opera formed part of ‘Opera Challenge’, Opera Holland Park’s admirable ‘try before you buy’ scheme which offers hundreds of tickets to people not used to opera. They can see the opera and then make a donation – or not. The management and friends of OHP are quick to defend what they do, as I know from emails I have received after reviews I have written, but I’ll courageously put myself in the firing line again. Whoever thought this particular work would attract a new permanent audience for opera needs a reality check, as do those who scheduled it in the first place. The people who might get a ‘buzz’ out of this work’s themes are probably at home watching some melodramatic soap opera and don’t need a night at the real thing!

The plot would not matter so much if Zandonai’s music helped in anyway to make what we were hearing memorable, but there is not one creditable melody in it anywhere. It is as if the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail had been set to music by Andrew Lloyd Webber. (I know that this spawned a musical Spamalot – but that has some memorable music in unlike this opera!) And his credit ‘The Lord’ does not hesitate to reuse music that has worked well before and usually he does give us at least one ‘good tune’ per show. Zandonai on the other hand rehashes Verdi, Puccini, Debussy and Strauss … and throws in for good measure an occasional reminder of Wagner. Any subtle colouring, ravishing lyricism or sheer drama is diluted by the smallish City of London Sinfonia and Tony Burke’s ‘orchestral reduction’; even though its sheer chamber-like nature was a bonus in the smaller, more intimate, scenes which worked the best. Unlike Wagner’s Tristan where there is hardly a wasted note, the simple plot here is dragged out for all its worth by a librettist incapable of moving the opera on with any real dramatic conviction. I do not know if there were any cuts in the score performed … but if not, then there should have been.

If only there had been some originality to Martin Lloyd-Evans’s direction. Only rarely were the characters singing at each other, though they did get to grips with mutuality now and again, but far too infrequently. There was much too much grand opera emoting and never once did I ever care – or was I moved by – what happened to Francesca and Paolo, who Ricordi has made preoccupied with their own ‘beauty’ while seemingly oblivious to the ugliness around them. Jamie Vartan’s sets and costumes are straight out the aforementioned Monty Python film or the BBC TV Merlin series and we even had a risible attempt to create an Italian version of the Battle of Agincourt scene from Olivier’s film of Henry V at the end of Act II, with a few miming archers and flaming arrows on poles going this way and that.

Hardly ever can so much effort have been expended on something less deserving despite the fact that musically it was clearly prepared with consummate care by the conductor, Phillip Thomas. He is a distinguished accompanist and coach and so is incredibly attentive to the demands on his valiant chorus and leading singers, possibly at the expense of revealing, when required, enough of the true opulence or decadence possible in the music. As the illicit lovers the vastly experienced singers Cheryl Barker and Julian Gavin were challenged at times by the demands of Zandonai’s difficult tessitura and unfortunately, as a couple they were also totally lacking in charisma. It is impossible to believe that Gavin, as Paolo ‘the Beautiful’, was the same artist who was so very good as Cavaradossi recently for English National Opera: he skulked around the whole evening with the hang-dog appearance of a young John Prescott.

As the dastardly Gianciotto, Jeffrey Black grimaces, employs an over-exaggerated funny-walk limp and growls a lot with the remnants of what must have been a very good voice in earlier times. Jeffery Lloyd-Roberts is someone who enhances his reputation with a ‘scene-chewing’ bravura performance as the totally deranged Malatestino. Also absolved of blame are the wonderful quartet of Francesca’s maid servants, Emma Carrington, Anna Leese, Gail Pearson and, notably because of her vibrant voice and personality, Madeleine Shaw as the ‘babbling’ Adonella.

This work will have its hard-core defenders of course, but I repeat what I and many other commentators are increasingly saying – some operas are neglected for good reason; and this is one of them. No matter how wonderful the commitment is from all concerned for what they were doing in this performance, Zandonai’s Francesca is a work cannot be taken seriously, doesn’t deserve an audience and should be allowed to rest in peace. And that’s ignoring its rampant political incorrectness, by the way.

Jim Pritchard

Picture © Fritz Curzon

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