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fanciulla del west
‘A fascinating shift of emphasis’: (l-r) Alwyn Mellor, Robert Hayward and Rafael Rojas in La fanciulla del West. Photograph: Donald Cooper
‘A fascinating shift of emphasis’: (l-r) Alwyn Mellor, Robert Hayward and Rafael Rojas in La fanciulla del West. Photograph: Donald Cooper

La fanciulla del West – review

This article is more than 10 years old
Grand theatre, Leeds
Opera North's production of Puccini's wild west opera forces a rethink by putting the men centre stage

If we know one thing about Puccini, it is that he saw into the broken hearts of his heroines and wept with them. While their stories speak of frailty and tragedy, their music affirms their ineluctable strength and the operas bear their names: La bohème, Butterfly, Tosca, Manon Lescaut. He gave Minnie, his "girl of the golden West", one of his most glorious and inventive scores: vast, dissonant, impassioned, troubling, modern. Minnie alone finds uneasy redemption, even if her ride into the sunset with her bandit lover, after the metaphorical credits roll, will be bumpy and probably fatal.

La fanciulla del West has never achieved popular success, but nor can it quite rank as a rarity. Casting Minnie, the gun-touting, Bible-reading girl behind the bar in the Polka saloon, presents a challenge: the voice has to grow inexorably, until at the climax it can scale an enlarged orchestra playing fortissimo while retaining its lyricism and tenderness. Her character, too, is a puzzle. Who is Minnie? What is her past? Why is she there, alone among these hard-hitting "forty-niners" of the mid-19th-century California gold rush? How, in such circumstances, has love eluded her all these years? We never learn.

In Opera North's new staging, directed by Aletta Collins and conducted by Richard Farnes, Alwyn Mellor sings the title role. An impressive Wagnerian with a growing reputation, she has many of the credentials for Minnie: might, presence, vocal strength. You believe her authority over these men, to whom she is teacher, comforter, nurturer and an awkward mix of mother and would-be lover. This is her story, of finding love among bandits and cheapskates, gamblers and drunks, in the end betraying her own standards by cheating to achieve her heart's desire.

The production takes a while to find clarity. The opening scene in the Polka feels confused. In the crowd, it's not always clear who is singing. More decisive lighting might have assisted. Giles Cadle's designs – simple, open-box structures to convey first the bar, then Minnie's hut – are effective, enhanced by Wells Fargo poster, cactus, mine shaft and other wild west imagery. Familiar to us today from a century of cinema, to Puccini it was all new and exotic. He saw David Belasco's play, The Girl of the Golden West, in New York in 1907 and immediately chose it as the subject for his next opera.

Yet despite the flaws, a fascinating shift of emphasis occurs in Opera North's reading, which grabs you by the throat and refuses to release its grip until the curtain falls. Mellors's skills notwithstanding, this Fanciulla has become an opera about men. Homesick, desperate, corrupt and suffocated by the tough misery of a mining community, they no longer know who they are, any morals they once had diluted by drink and despair. They occupy the foreground, not the backdrop, of Minnie's existence. The opera seems to presage the enclosed male world of Britten's Billy Budd.

This is conveyed, essentially, by Robert Hayward in the central role of the sheriff, Jack Rance. Where Mellors's Minnie remains a somewhat unyielding figure, even when floored by love, Hayward's brilliant Rance ripples with complexity: a bully, a creep, a bigot, his chief crime is to love without return. "Night after night I have wept for you only to have you laugh in my face," he cries (to paraphrase), knowing he has lost Minnie to another petty criminal. This unexpected pathos proves shocking.

The Mexican tenor Rafael Rojas is creditable as the handsome devil Dick Johnson/Ramerrez, accurate if not hugely characterful. Among cameos, Bonaventura Bottone's Nick, Gavan Ring's Jake Wallace and, notably, Eddie Wade as the good guy Sonora stood out. After a hesitant start, the male chorus shone and the orchestra gleamed throughout. This may not be the greatest Fanciulla you will ever see, but it strikes its own variety of Puccini gold and deserves a rush to see it.

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