Opera

Le Villi

Theatre Royal, Glasgow

Mary Brennan

five stars

INSPIRED programming, powerful performances from orchestra and singers alike – this final Opera in Concert from Scottish Opera was a triumph and a treat. The company’s production of Puccini’s La Boheme is now touring: with a complementary flourish, musical director/conductor Stuart Stratford rounded off the Sunday Series with less familiar, early works by the composer. “What if...” he said, introducing three short, orchestral pieces and speculating on what might have been if Puccini had adhered to symphonic work. But as the Scottish Opera Orchestra rolled out the dramatic light and shade of Preludio Sinfonica, Crisantemi and Capriccio Sinfonico, what we heard were melodic phrases and hauntingly emotive passages that would gradually resurface in Puccini’s operas. Nothing else that Puccini subsequently composed, however, is quite like Le Villi (1884), written when he was just 25 and here given its Scottish premiere. It’s an opera-ballet in two parts, a tale of love, betrayal and the supernatural that – like Adolphe Adam’s Giselle – invokes the Willis, woodland spirits of jilted maidens who wreak deadly revenge on faithless men.

Act One finds Anna (soprano Karen Slack, making her Scottish Opera debut) already fearful that Roberto (tenor Peter Auty) won’t return to her. Her meltingly lovely Se come voi piccina is, as with so many future Puccini heroines, a dream of romantic bliss tinged with vulnerability. Come Act Two, Anna is an implacable ghost. A spoken narrative has described Roberto’s off-stage philandering, now no amount of pleading – and Auty’s Torna ai felici dì is a soaring cri de coeur – can avert the curse visited on him by Anna’s father (baritone Stephen Gadd). We have to imagine Willis whirling on-stage to the Wagnerian urgency of Puccini’s Witches’ Sabbath, but – with soloists, chorus and orchestra in unstinting form – Le Villi in concert proved astoundingly thrilling.