Convincing performances and unexpected sounds: Opera Holland Park’s Delius/Puccini double bill reviewed

Delius and Puccini: how’s that for an operatic odd couple? Delius, that most faded of British masters, now remembered largely as a purveyor of wistful aquarelles. And…well, and Puccini. Early, neglected Puccini, true, but this is Opera Holland Park, where they make it their mission to rescue the waifs and strays of Italian late romanticism, and see how they scrub up. Demonstrable dud by unfashionable Englishman vs youthful ambition from Italian opera’s ultimate marquee name. We all knew, in advance, how that was likely to play out.

And we were all wrong. It turns out that both Puccini’s Le Villi (1884) and Delius’s Margot la Rouge (1902) were written for the same long-running competition that gave us Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana. A nice connection; more interesting is the way in which these one-acters, in angling for the prize, attempt something untypical of their composers and end up revealing what makes each man tick.