Opera North's Gianni Schicchi and La vida breve reviewed: a flawless double helping of verismo

Is there a more beautiful aria than ‘O mio babbino caro’ from Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi? There are more overwhelming moments in opera, to be sure, but few arias can rival it for the way its beauty kicks you in the back of the knees; its gentle rocking motion causes your shoulders to slump while the little floated top notes dilate the music’s gaze, drawing the listener irresistibly into its secret promise of untroubled bliss.

Nor does it help that the aria’s whole point is to be irresistible. ‘Daddy dearest, I love him so,’ sings Schicchi’s teenage daughter Lauretta. She might equally be thinking of a doggy in a window: it doesn’t matter because her music and its evocation of romantic plenitude immediately turns her unscrupulous father — and us — into putty in her hands. And while powerful enough by itself — particularly when blasted through Lucy Honeychurch’s open window in Merchant Ivory’s A Room with a View — in context the aria’s pastoral flow and tenderness tears through the frenetic, biting fabric of the rest of the opera’s music with a surprising force, a breeze of innocence stilling the relentless scheming and self-interest.

The moment is superbly achieved by the director Christopher Alden and conductor Jac van Steen in their new production of Schicchi for Opera North. The rear wall of Charles Edwards’s sparse set is pushed forward, literally forcing the focus on to the indistinct character of Lauretta and squeezing the fretting Donatis out into the wings. Evenly and unforcedly sung by Jennifer France, as the orchestra swells around her, Lauretta is played as a hair-chewing adolescent, ill at ease, awkward about everything except about manipulating her father.