Mascagni’s breakthrough opera Cavalleria rusticana is often now paired with something other than ‘Pag’, but rarely with his own later essay in verismo, Silvano (1895). It’s a similarly terse drama (albeit in two acts) relating a torrid story of jealous love that ends in violent death, set among a fishing community on the Adriatic coast. While the title character was exiled for banditry, his lover Matilde had an affair with Renzo. He won’t accept that she returns to Silvano, and when the latter discovers that she has been with Renzo, Silvano kills him.
The narrative is rather more one dimensional than Cavalleria – only Silvano is really developed as a character; and the score doesn’t feature writing for orchestra or voices that is quite so memorably impassioned or foreboding as Mascagni’s early masterpiece. But, called a dramma marinaresco, the maritime setting afforded the composer the opportunity to evoke the sea or the starlit night over it in some attractive passages of music. They were brought out translucently by Matthew Kofi Waldren and the Chelsea Opera Group Orchestra in this concert performance, as also the yearning instrumental lines adumbrating or echoing those of the voices. The red-hot intensity of its ending here brought the work within the same ambit as Cavalleria’s seething passions, also thrillingly realised in this performance.
There were different tenors for each work. Although Silvano is the villain of his drama, José de Eça imparted a tragic, urgent lyricism to the role, like a Cavaradossi in the ardour and focus of this interpretation. As the philandering Turiddu in the other opera, Andrés Presno offered a swaggering alacrity, his ringing high notes conveying his character’s wilfulness with extrovert musical charisma. One might say that the two singers’ contrasting styles were like those of Domingo and Pavarotti respectively, each alluring in their alternate ways.
Seljan Fermor-Hesketh was the principal soprano common to both – duskier and more mellow as the repentant Matilde of Silvano, and more richly assertive and assured as Santuzza, Turiddu’s lover whom he slights by returning to his old flame Lola. Morgan Pearse gave a hectic, flustered account of the latter’s husband Alfio, as he swore revenge on Turiddu, whereas in Silvano he was more straightforwardly vociferous and emphatic (though no less menacing) as Matilde’s suitor Renzo. Sarah Pring’s wide vibrato expressed a certain maternal solicitude in the roles of the two mothers, Rosa and Lucia. Appearing only in Cavalleria, Rebecca Afonwy-Jones gave a goading, ironically innocent lustre to the part of Lola, playing a decisive role in Turiddu’s downfall at Alfio’s hands.
Enthusiastically committed contributions from chorus as well as orchestra ensured a great welter of emotion in both operas, confirming the stature of Cavalleria and offering a worthwhile reading of Silvano. With two fine tenors complementing each other – not in competition – this was a highlight in Chelsea Opera Group’s enviable history of exploring fascinating repertoire.
Curtis Rogers
Silvano
Composer: Pietro Mascagni
Libretto: Giovanni Targioni-Tozetti
Cavalleria rusticana
Composer: Pietro Mascagni
Libretto: Giovanni Targioni-Tozetti and Guido Menasci
Cast and Production Staff:
Silvano
Silvano – José de Eça; Matilde – Seljan Fermor-Hesketh; Renzo – Morgan Pearse; Rosa – Sarah Pring
Cavalleria rusticana
Turiddu – Andrés Presno; Santuzza – Seljan Fermor-Hesketh; Alfio – Morgan Pearse; Lucia – Sarah Pring; Lola – Rebecca Afonwy-Jones
Conductor – Matthew Kofi Waldren; Chelsea Opera Group Orchestra and Chorus
Cadogan Hall, London, UK, Sunday 15 March 2026
All images courtesy of Chelsea Opera Group