Opera
Il Tabarro/Suor Angelica
Festival Theatre, Edinburgh
Keith Bruce
four stars
OPERA North has made something of a speciality of shorter works recently, so it is good that the company brought this double bill of late Puccini to Edinburgh alongside its acclaimed Billy Budd, even if the absence of the levity of their companion piece Gianni Schicchi threatened a grim evening.
It was with Richard Mosley-Evans in the title role that English Touring Opera brought that piece to Perth five years ago, teamed with an excellent Il Tabarro (The Cloak). If the staging there was redolent of On The Waterfront, this production seems more like a stepping stone to Carousel, with Johan Engels' clever black-box-within-a-black-box set culminating in a freeze frame like a single image from the monochrome silent movies of the era just around the corner.
Puccini himself harks back with reference to the music of Madame Butterfly in the score, but this was a sharp modern ensemble piece with Mosley-Evans as Talpa, Ivan Inverardi as the barge-skipper Michele and Giselle Allen as his "slut" wife, Giorgetta. Vocal honours, however, go to tenor David Butt Philip as her doomed lover Luigi, while there was fine playing of the sparkling score from the orchestra.
Sister Angelica – set in a convent that is a penitentiary – is also far from cheery, but there was black humour and bleak satire at the expense of the church in the opening scenes, with characterful vignettes among the large cast, including former Scottish Opera Emerging Artist Marie Claire Breen. Anne-Sophie Duprels (Scot Op's Rusalka) was excellent in the title role, but the stage was stolen by Patricia Bardon as her visiting wicked aunt in a yellow silk suit, coat and shoes. Whether you buy in to the vision of eternal bliss that director Michael Barker-Caven introduces at the end is another matter altogether.
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