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’. Francesca has been tricked into marriage with the hideously disabled Gianciotto, who sends his handsome brother Paolo il bello, who colludes in the deceit that he will be Francesca’s bridegroom. D’Annunzio, an early campaigner against political correctness, whatever else you may think of him, invents a third brother, brave but also disfigured, who spies on the lovers and reports back to Gianciotto, with the result that led Dante to faint: eternal justice demands that they are doomed to perpetual torment, after having been brutally murdered. This queasily sub-post-Wagnerian plot elicited just the right kind of music from Zandonai, who was never again to find so congenial a tale of passion and brutality.
OHP’s production and performance is virtually ideal. On the opening night the Gianciotto of Jeffrey Black seemed to be dogged by a throat infection, and higher notes were strangulated. But Julian Gavin’s Paolo was ruggedly magnificent, and above all the Francesca of Cheryl Barker would be luxury casting anywhere in the world.
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