While Opera Holland Park offers its fair share of box-office bankers, it also enjoys disinterring neglected, if not “masterpieces”, then let’s say “curiosities”. This double bill presents two for the price of one. Both Delius’s Margot la Rouge and Puccini’s Le Villi were written for a competition for short operas, Margot in 1902, Le Villi in 1883. Neither won. Delius’s opera had to wait nearly 80 years for its premiere. Puccini’s, his first opera, was disqualified from the competition but was warmly received when it was staged in 1884.
Putting them together works well. Martin Lloyd Evans’s production has one set, designed by takis: a wooden shack on a revolving stage that allows two views of the structure. In Margot la Rouge, they show the interior and exterior of a shabby drinking den where sex workers – Margot among them – take a break from their labour. They are joined by two soldiers, one of whom, Thibault, recognises Margot as an old flame. He gets into an argument with her current lover, who kills him before being killed in turn by a vengeful Margot.
A slender but convincing story, thriftily told: the whole plot unfolds in 45 minutes. Delius’s music is richly detailed and melodic, although the orchestra – City of London Sinfonia under Francesco Cilluffo, playing a specially prepared reduction – occasionally overrides the voices. Even so, there’s a gorgeous love duet between Samuel Sakker (Thibault) and Anne Sophie Duprels (Margot) and a lively cameo from Sarah Minns. Unfortunately nobody – not even Duprels, who is French – manages to make the French text really sing. Instead it emerges as a blur of vowels and consonants.
Puccini’s Le Villi, sung in Italian, fares better. Vengeance here is exacted by supernatural beings, the Villi, represented by female dancers dressed for a white wedding, which turns into murder. Jami Reid-Quarrell’s movement direction, including for the chorus, is energetic and imaginative, and there are several stunning stage images. The revolving set works overtime to represent a variety of locations – church, parterre, graveyard – all evoked with a pleasing sense of grand guignol.
The three principal roles are resoundingly well sung. Stephen Gadd plays a forester while also delivering the linking spoken passages. But it is the lovers – tenor and soprano, of course – who get the meatiest music, which time and again prefigures the mature Puccini. Anne Sophie Duprels again takes the female lead, her voice sumptuously expressive, while Peter Auty is in ringing good form as her lover Roberto, even if there are moments of strain under pressure. These days, short operas aren’t much in demand but there’s a lot to be said for Puccini at his most economical.
Opera Holland Park, until August 6, operahollandpark.com
