Some works, regardless of the celebrity of their composer, are obscure for a reason. Giacomo Puccini’s second opera, Edgar, failed at its premiere and has never managed to gain a foothold on the stage. Opera Holland Park, always a supporter of lesser known Italian operas from this period, has taken the opportunity given by the centenary of Puccini’s death to offer audiences an opportunity to decide the merits for themselves. This was a noble effort, but despite the best efforts of Naomi Woo, drawing a meaty, glistening performance from the City of London Sinfonia, it didn’t really pay off.
Wisely OHP didn’t go all in on a full production, landing instead on an effective semi-staging directed by Ruth Knight. Full costume dress for the principals, young actors giving a sense of their childhoods and reasonable direction of the chorus made as much of the drama as is possible, particularly in the finales of Act 1 and 3. It is a challenge, though, when that theatrical flair and innate facility for character development and dynamic that Puccini displayed throughout his other works are so absent here. It doesn’t help that it’s a fundamentally unpleasant plot; a kind of anti-Carmen in which the eponymous character chooses lust, in the form of Tigrana, over a more chaste love, represented by Fidelia, regrets that choice and then embarks on a twisted mission to humiliate his ex. Predictably it’s the loyal and decent Fidelia who suffers the fatal repercussions.
Knight’s attempt to depict the childhood links between the principals is a thoughtful, but ultimately unsuccessful strategy to plug Puccini’s dramatic gaps. She also attempts to veer Tigrana away from the stereotypical “wild lady”, giving us instead a demure and often still figure, reducing the distance from Fidelia and sharpening the focus on Edgar’s behaviour. There were, though, occasionally problems in the placing of characters in such a way that singing was directed away from the audience; this would not necessarily be a problem in some houses, but presented a challenge in OHP’s unique space. This contributed to a mixed performance from the principals.
Standing out was company stalwart Anne Sophie Duprels’ performance as Fidelia; flinty-voiced at times, her forceful higher register, flavoursome and clean, sliced through the orchestra. Julian Van Mellaerts sang Frank, a badly drawn role, with a mellow, expressive baritone; if the transition from testosterone-fuelled lover to phlegmatic officer was unconvincing, it was at least sweetly sung. Ditching fine clothes for clerical cloth like a parody of Rossini, Edgar was sung by Peter Auty; his dry tenor seemed underpowered and struggled to make an impact, while a lack of chemistry with either love interest can be attributed to the thin plot. As Tigrana, Gweneth-Ann Rand seemed uninspired until Act 3, her voice only firing up in the final scene. It’s tough for a performance to take off when the principals seem to struggle to really invest their characters with life – and to make us believe in them, to care for them. Credit to Opera Holland Park for giving this a go, but let us hope that this has now been ticked off the list for the foreseeable future.
