Review

A strange pairing that strikes surprising sparks - Cavalleria rusticana, Trial by Jury, Opera North/Grand Theatre, Leeds, review 

Cavalleria Rusticana
Credit: Robert Workman

Opera North is presenting its season of one-act operas in several mix-and-match permutations – none of them so strange as the pairing of Mascagni’s turgid melodrama Cavalleria rusticana with Gilbert and Sullivan’s wafer-thin confection Trial by Jury. But the clash strikes sparks, and in both cases a healthy irreverence yields dividends.

A Polish émigrée, Karolina Sofulak directs Cavalleria rusticana. She has taken it out of its original context in a hot Sicilian village and translated it to an obscure corner of her native land during its bleakest Communist years. Even sausage is rationed in Mamma Lucia’s butcher’s shop, and Alfio’s cart becomes a clapped-out Trabant, inside which Turiddu is summarily dispatched. Everyone looks unremittingly miserable.

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Strikingly designed out of cheap wooden panels by Charles Edwards, the setting works surprisingly well, emphasising an oppressive Catholicism and evoking the grittier films of Andrezj Wajda. Attempts to transcend the purely naturalistic nature of the tale (as, for example, a tableau in which Turiddu becomes a crucified Christ with Santuzza the kneeling Magdalene) confuse rather than enrich, and the music contains a vein of peasant exuberance that doesn’t get reflected on stage, but Sofulak creates a potent atmosphere that gives fresh impetus to the tragedy.

Cavalleria
Credit: Robert Workman

Tobias Ringborg’s conducting struggles to control the score’s oddly stop-start rhythm, but the cast is fully committed, with Giselle Allen flinging herself into Santuzza’s despair and Philip Rhodes crisply defining Alfio’s   ruthlessness. There are sharp cameos from Rosalind Plowright as the cynically watchful Mamma Lucia and Katie Bray as Lola. Jonathan Stoughton’s Turiddu struggled to keep in tune and seemed nervous of the climaxes, but he certainly looked the part.

After the break, we moved into G&S’s world of topsy-turveydom, with its brilliant parodies of Handelian oratorio and Italian opera. John Savournin’s jolly PG Wodehousian production adds a spoken prologue in which a Hedda Hopper figure (Amy J Payne) reports the background to the legal proceedings to a radio audience. Like the man in the Bateman cartoon, I couldn’t see much point to this, but all around me folks were chuckling away merrily and Opera North’s super chorus – which furnishes the entire cast – gratefully seized its chance to lark around.

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Trial By jury
Amy Freston and Jeremy Peaker in Trial by Jury Credit: Robert Workman

Once inside the courtroom, all went according to plan, with Nicholas Watts shining in Edwin’s graceful aria and Jeremy Peaker proving himself a true Savoyard in the Judge’s satirical ballad. If only Gilbert didn’t emerge from the libretto as such an unreconstructed male chauvinist pig.

Until Oct 21, then touring to Hull, Nottingham, Newcastle and Salford Quays. Tickets: 0844 848 2720; operanorth.co.uk

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