Opera for a sweet tooth and a soft heart
La Rondine Investec Opera Holland Park
There aren’t many British sopranos today in the class of Elizabeth Llewellyn, and it’s sad and baffling that managements here haven’t been making her the sort of solid offers that would have persuaded her not to base herself abroad – she’s been in Germany for the past couple of years and in 2018 will be appearing in Copenhagen and Seattle. Come on, ENO, do something about this!
Meanwhile, full marks to Investec Opera Holland Park’s James Clutton, who has had the nous to lure her back as Magda in Puccini’s gentle romance
La Rondine (The Swallow), a tale that reverses the premise of La traviata by showing a good-time Parisienne who renounces the chance of true love and married respectability because she knows her flighty self too well.
It’s a role that requires wit, grace, elegance and the ability to float seraphically above the stave
– all qualities that Llewellyn has in abundance. She plays exquisitely with the phrasing of Magda’s one showpiece aria, “Chi il bel sogno di Doretta”, and rises confidently to its moments of climax, but mostly one appreciates the sheer charm and lightness of touch Wit, grace, elegance: Elizabeth Llewellyn, second left, and Matteo Lippi, left with which she paints the chattier aspects of her music.
She is well matched to Matteo Lippi, a useful young Italian tenor who made his mark last autumn as Pinkerton in Glyndebourne’s Madama Butterfly. As Magda’s infatuated suitor Ruggero, he doesn’t sing with Llewellyn’s subtlety, but he produces plenty of vibrantly healthy sound and relishes the gorgeous “Bevo al tuo fresco sorriso” – a melody for which I would give Puccini a passport direct to heaven. I only wish Lippi had been costumed to look more like an innocent from the provinces and less like a suburban bank manager.
Another promising young tenor, Stephen Aviss, does a stylish turn as the foppish poet Prunier, sparring and flirting with Tereza Gevorgyan’s pert maid Lisette, vocally a little under-projected. There are some nice characterisations further down the cast list and the chorus enjoys itself in the jolly second act set in a louche dance hall.
With Matthew Kofi Waldren conducting the City of London Sinfonia with warm affection and Martin Lloyd-evans presenting a likeable staging updated to the Paris of the Nouvelle Vague era, this is an operatic confection that can be warmly recommended to anyone with a sweet tooth and a soft heart.