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Zanetto/Gianni Schicchi – review

This article is more than 11 years old
Holland Park, London

Opera Holland Park have long been committed to the re-examination of lesser-known works from the Italian post-Romantic repertory, and this year have uncovered a real rarity in Mascagni's Zanetto, a striking one-acter that forms the first half of a double bill with Puccini's Gianni Schicchi. A muted, reflective piece, it dates from 1896, and deals – in ways that curiously pre-empt Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier – with themes of age, time and regret in its portrait of the world-weary courtesan Silvia, who abandons her dreams of a relationship with the musician Zanetto when she realises she is not the ideal woman he is seeking.

Mascagni's source, François Coppée's play Le Passant, was associated with Sarah Bernhardt, and director Martin Lloyd-Evans reimagines the opera as a dressing-room encounter between an iconic, ageing actress and a naive young intruder. Posters based on the famous images of Bernhardt in La Dame aux Camélias and Musset's Lorenzaccio adorn the walls; whenever Janice Watson's Silvia looks in her mirror, it is her younger self that gazes back. Vocally, she can be effortful, though the title role, written for a mezzo, is beautifully sung by Patricia Orr.

Gianni Schicchi, meanwhile, is stunning. Lloyd-Evans's staging is savagely funny, but also cannily reminds us that the only things that separate Schicchi from the odious Donati family are class and cunning. Alan Opie gives a towering, gleeful performance in the title role, though what really impresses here is the ensemble playing, in which no one – from Carole Wilson's ferocious Zita and Simon Wilding's alcoholic Betto to John Lofthouse's prissy lawyer Amantio – puts a foot wrong. It's conducted with lethal precision by Manlio Benzi, too.

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