Francesca da Rimini
La forza del destino
Opera Holland Park, in rep until 14 August
Tristan und Isolde Act II
Royal Albert Hall
Opera Holland Park makes a speciality of reviving Italian operas of the early 20th century, often absurdly and lazily dubbed ‘verismo’. Its latest, and possibly most courageous effort on this front, is Zandonai’s Francesca da Rimini, which, far from conforming to the aesthetic brilliantly outlined in the sung Prologue to I Pagliacci, takes a subject very far removed from quotidian life, and decked out in the almost fatally pretentious language of D’Annunzio.
The story is taken from Canto V of Dante’s Inferno, with the adulterers, a wholly sympathetic pair, unwisely reading about Lancelot and Guinevere, until their eyes meet, and ‘we read no more that afternoon’.
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