Opera Holland Park’s season opens with a new production by Olivia Fuchs of Iris, Pietro Mascagni’s alarming piece of Japonaiserie, first seen in 1898. With narrative overtones of Richardson’s Clarissa and De Sade’s Justine, it’s set in Tokyo’s red-light district, where the teenage Iris is forcibly held in a brothel by the libertine Osaka, before being hounded to death by her father who believes she has entered prostitution voluntarily. Like the flower from which she takes her name, and the lotuses that strew the floor of Soutra Gilmour’s set, she maintains her integrity and beauty in the muck, literal and symbolic, that surrounds her. But the score’s queasy, opulent sensuality also makes Mascagni complicit in the abuse he so horribly portrays.
Fuchs explores its dichotomies clear-mindedly and without sensationalism in a staging, her finest of recent years, that is at its most unbearable when it is most restrained. She’s helped immeasurably by a performance of almost terrifying intensity from Anne Sophie Duprels in the title role. Noah Stewart makes an occasionally unsubtle Osaka, though James Cleverton is outstanding as the insidious pimp Kyoto. Stuart Stratford conducts with dogged commitment and the choral singing, above all in the hymn to the sun that Mascagni offers as some sort of spiritual consolation for this mess, is glorious. It’s among the most uncomfortable things to get through: that you might never want to hear it again is actually testament to its power.
Comments (…)
Sign in or create your Guardian account to join the discussion