Adriana Lecouvreur, Opera Holland Park, review: "brave but misguided"

Opera Holland Park's production of Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur was muddled and poorly updated, says Rupert Christiansen

Tiziana Carraro as Princess de Bouillon and Peter Auty as Maurizio in Adriana Lecouvreur at Holland Park Opera Credit: Photo: Alastair Muir

Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur belongs with Puccini’s Tosca (and several operas by Giordano) as a fin de siècle romance of boudoir sex and skulduggery in high places, based on dramas made famous by Sarah Bernhardt.

Unlike Tosca, however, it lacks the Teflon factor - unless you fling a wad of money, spectacle and stars at it, the glamorous melodramatic surface crumbles and all that remains is a creaking convoluted plot and a score drawn on jejune clichés.

This, sadly, is the case with Opera Holland Park’s brave but misguided revival. Under-cast and skimpily financed, it comes across as silly and tawdry in a staging that left everyone bemused: the interval was spent in a desperate search for anybody capable of explaining exactly what that woman in a white veil was doing locked in a broom cupboard.

This wasn’t altogether the fault of the director Martin Lloyd -Evans, who has honestly tried to clarify the tale of the titular French tragedienne’s rivalry with the Princesse de Bouillon over the love of the disguised political intriguer Maurizio by transferring the setting from the Comédie-Française of the Louis Quinze era to a film studio in a 1930s Fascist state.

But this proved to be one of those updatings which muddies the waters and leaves one wondering why the situation wasn’t resolved by someone picking up the telephone or catching a bus. The emotional gestures don’t fit either - the music bespeaks a grandeur and hauteur undercut by Jamie Vartan’s joblot sets and costumes, complete with wobbling flats and doors reluctant to shut or open.

This might not have mattered so much had the singing been superb, but nothing was caressed, nothing palpitated, and it never rose above the decent. Although Cheryl Barker is a seasoned pro of a lyric soprano, she’s past her vocal prime and her demeanour as the heroine is more that of a grumpy B picture starlet than the charismatic diva whose recitations of Racinian alexandrines send her admirers into ecstasies.

As Maurizio, Peter Auty showed some authentic Italianate tenorial ardour but lacked the required Ruritanian allure, while Tiziana Carraro’s Princess was plain vulgar.

On the plus side, Richard Burkhard vivified the hapless stage manager Michonnet, and Manlio Benzi conducted the City of London Sinfonia with silky finesse. But this was a performance in which the temperature seemed considerably higher in the auditorium than it was on stage.

Until 9 August, 0300 999 1000; www.operahollandpark.com