La Fanciulla del West, Opera North/Grand Theatre Leeds, review

A drop curtain depicting the Californian desert in the laconic manner of a Glen Baxter cartoon did not bode well for this new production of La Fanciulla del West, Puccini’s opera of the 1849 Gold Rush. Nor did black memories of the hash that the director Aletta Collins made last year of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas (relocated to a Hilton hotel room).

But I need not have worried: what followed was simple, modest and focused, but never dull or mindless. I would even go so far as to say it was exemplary of the way works of this epic nature can be staged on a low budget.

Collins and her designer Giles Cadle haven’t deconstructed the plot or hammed it up or even pretended it’s a John Ford movie: instead they take it for real, focusing on character rather than concept and attempting to make it as sincerely and naively moving as possible.

The log cabin environment is stylized but not ironised, and a basic period sense observed in the costuming. Collins is particularly successful in highlighting the personalities of the individual prospectors in the first Act and building a Tosca-like sense of erotic tension in the second. Like every director, she has trouble making the bizarre comings and goings in Minnie’s cabin seem plausible, but the lynch-mob and hanging is managed with tact and dignity.

A cannily selected cast abets her. Alwyn Mellor makes a somewhat matronly Minnie but one with a winning toughness and resourcefulness. After a tentative start, her voice opens thrillingly to the climaxes, both romantic and dramatic.

Her Ramerrez is the authentically Mexican tenor Rafael Rojas, rather dapper for an outlawed bandit, but vibrant in tone and secure in shaping Puccini’s expansive phrases. His antagonist Sheriff Jack Rance is presented by Robert Hayward as a lugubrious alcoholic with a tremulous hold on his authority. All three will doubtless let rip more when they’ve played themselves in, but their potential is rich.

Gavan Ring’s sozzled minstrel Jake Wallace and Eddie Wade’s Sonora make their mark among the motley crew of dreamers and losers, nursed by Richard Farnes’s measured and attentive conducting. Ideally, one would like more sumptuous orchestral playing - this is one of Puccini’s most lavish and intricate scores - but I don’t think anyone is going to come away feeling short-changed of the music’s emotional grandeur and picturesque charm.

Until 21 February, then touring

Tickets: 0844 848 2700; (www.operanorth.co.uk)