Despite its large cast, the drama of La fanciulla del West (1910) is ultimately one of the more intimate of Puccini’s operas, centred on the love triangle between Minnie, owner of the Polka saloon, sheriff Jack Rance, and the bandit he is trying to track down, Dick Johnson. It is not simply a romantic love story since, in Minnie’s acceptance of him, Johnson is redeemed from his life of criminality, as also the miners in this Californian camp when they learn from her what compassion and forgiveness are.
Director Martin Lloyds-Evans, and designer Anna Reid making her Opera Holland Park debut, ably conjure the world of 1840s California during the Gold Rush. But, with Róisín Whelan’s meticulous, detailed input, they choreograph a compelling atmosphere of claustrophobia and suspicion, with tension rising straightaway in Act One among the miners at the saloon bar who are ranged out all around the thrust stage of the OHP auditorium, in the centre of which the orchestra sit, as though bystanders or even participants. Minnie’s dollhouse-like hut for Act Two is more a prison from which Johnson must escape Rance’s searching, rather than a refuge where he can safely hide from him. By filtering through the audience onto the stage in Act Three in order to enact summary justice upon Johnson, the miners implicate us in their condemnation of him, such that his and Minnie’s departure through the wood panelled wall at the conclusion comes as much of a psychological and existential release as a physical one for the pair. For all that the Gold Rush promised so much in the way of material reward, home and freedom are to be found elsewhere. Despite being firmly grounded in the 1840s, it surely isn’t hard also to see in this production an oblique comment on the limitations and flaws of the American Dream today.
Musically the performance belongs to José de Eça’s magnificently sung Johnson. He brings a rugged solidity in his lower register when he first appears, his first line jokingly turned against his bald self when he throws back Minnie’s earlier suggestion about the potency of the whiskey kept at the saloon, as to whose hair it will curl. In the trickier flights of soaring melody which occur later – above all in the chorale-like monologue ‘Ch’ella mi creda’, sung before he believes he is about to be executed – he crafts a burnished vocal profile which blends with the orchestra like an astutely chosen organ stop in a full registration, without cracks or audible adjustments as he reaches the higher notes. If he’s a touch more effortful than a Domingo or Kaufmann in this role, he nevertheless makes it wonderfully his own.
Although Minnie is a less conspicuous figure than Puccini’s better-known tragic heroines, in some ways its’s a more difficult role in walking a tightrope between social innocence and naivete on the one hand, and her emotional maturity and wisdom on the other. Amanda Echalaz’s interpretation comes down firmly on the latter side, cutting securely through the orchestra with an incisive, matronly tone that is a little restricted in higher passages, especially when these burst out from nowhere. Robert Hayward’s Rance has more of the dignified bearing of a Victorian schoolmaster than a sheriff of the Wild West perhaps, though vocally he successfully embodies the character’s weariness and discontent.
The sizeable cast of smaller roles is impressive here as exactly an ensemble of individuals who create distinctive musical personalities, before falling back into the wider OHP Chorus of tenors and basses only. En masse the miners constitute a formidable choral force with, at one extreme, their moving a cappella, a pianissimo yearning for home in Act One sounding as one voice somewhat like a Welsh male voice choir; and at the other end a fearsome commotion in Act Three as they round up Johnson and seek his punishment, like the braying turba of a Bach Passion against Christ. Among the individuals, prominent are the sonorous account of Jake Wallace’s minstrel song by Blaise Malaba with the trembling emotion of a spiritual, Ronald Nairne’s flustered, vociferous bandit Castro, and Zwakele Tshabalala’s straightforward, amenable Nick the bartender. As the only other female role in the opera, Kezia Bienek’s Wowkle gives, with Freddie Tong as her lover Billy Jackrabbit, an idiosyncratic performance in Act Two, contrasting with the high drama of the dialogue between Minnie and Johnson which ensues.
In this reduced orchestration of the score, by Ettore Panizza, the City of London Sinfonia bring lucidity and agility, which avoids the overblown or sentimental. Under Matthew Kofi Waldren, their reading is finely poised between dramatic urgency and a more spacious, lyrical pace which gives the music due emotional weight. There is an apt subtlety in this account of an opera which almost entirely foregoes arias, choruses and other set pieces, but constitutes a more dynamic sequence of vocalised dialogue. Those who find Puccini’s more famous operas to wear their melodrama too much on their sleeve should find in this one more balanced dramatic tension, without sacrificing the composer’s characteristically rich orchestral style.
Curtis Rogers
La fanciulla del West
Composer: Giacomo Puccini
Libretto: Guelfo Civinini and Carlo Zangarini after David Belasco’s play
Cast and production staff:
Minnie – Amanda Echalaz; Robert Hayward – Jack Rance; José de Eça – Dick Johnson; Nick – Zwakele Tshabalala; Ashby – Alaric Green; Sonora – Aidan Edwards; Trin – Jamie Formoy; Sid – Joe Ashmore; Bello – Michael Temporal Darell; Harry – Dominick Felix; Joe – Hugh Beckwith; Happy – Matthew Duncan; Jim Larkens – Samuel Snowden; Billy Jackrabbit – Freddie Tong; Wowkle – Kezia Bienek; Jake Wallace – Blaise Malaba; José Castro – Ronald Nairne; The Pony Express Rider – Robert Jenkins
Director – Martin Lloyd-Evans; Designer – Anna Reid; Lighting Designer – Jame Platt; Choreographer – Róisín Whelan; Fight Director – Haruka Kuroda; Conductor – Matthew Kofi Waldren; Opera Holland Park Chorus; City of London Sinfonia
Opera Holland Park, London, 29 May 2026
Photos: © Craig Fuller