La Scala di Seta review – Rossini's amiable farce fizzes along gleefully

In the same week that it premiered a new production of Duke Bluebeard’s Castle, Scottish Opera offered up the perfect counterpoint to its darkness with this performance of La Scala di Seta. Rossini’s early one-act comedy is known today almost entirely by its overture, but the whole plays out merrily as an amiable farce. It’s the usual nonsense of young lovers, thwarted suitors, duped guardians and hapless servants, a miniature prototype Barber of Seville without the famous bits. Rossinian musical hallmarks abound, not least in the mid-point quartet, where chaos reigns and the characters turn to the audience to express their bewilderment as the orchestral accompaniment fizzes gleefully along in the background.

It’s a slight work and it’s difficult to see why anyone would mount a full-scale production. Here, Scottish Opera hit on the near-perfect solution: the simplest of semi-staged performances, with the action played out in front of the orchestra. A handful of props brought the theatre to life (an evening scarf substituting for the titular silken ladder) and added visual elements to the comedy.

Jennifer France and Luciano Botelho led the likable young cast as the resourceful lovers, with fine support from mezzo Katie Bray in the best friend role, Christopher Turner as the clueless guardian and Joshua Bloom as the philandering suitor. The standout performance was Nicholas Lester as the hopelessly confused servant. Lester is by nature more of an aristocrat, but here he used his elegance for comic effect.

The performance was put together by conductor David Parry, who kept the action rolling along nicely with the Orchestra of Scottish Opera a sympathetic partner.