Atmospheric staging with a real star turn
Zazà Opera Holland Park
Like Tosca, like Adriana Lecouvreur and a hundred other operas of the fin-de-siècle era, Leoncavallo’s Zazà takes an almost prurient interest in the louche sexual morals of theatre folk. The titular lady is a star of the café-cabarets, born, like Piaf, in the gutter and still ready to fight dirty to get her due. A smooth stage-door Johnny called Milio Dufresne woos her and wins her, but when she discovers he is married and a liar she renounces him in a final showdown even more frenzied than that of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin.
First performed in 1900, Zazà was Leoncavallo’s biggest hit after his sensational success with Pagliacci eight years earlier. The first two acts witter on somewhat, but the score has more delicacy and colour than its predecessor, and the music slips down easily without delivering much that is memorable – until the emotional screws are tightened in the final scene.
A touching encounter between Zazà and Milio’s young daughter, a spoken role, is probably the most original touch, even if the composer doesn’t make much of it. A more crucial dramatic shortcoming is that the situation is never made complex enough to hold one’s interest, as Milio is nothing but a cad and a bounder who ought to be horsewhipped.
But it’s certainly a piece that merits its current resuscitation, and Opera Holland Park has done it proud in an exemplary production by Marie Lambert that suggests both the tawdry glamour of backstage and the rather bleaker realities of a life of theatrical stardom. Peter Robinson’s sensitive conducting honours the evanescent fragrances of Leoncavallo’s skilful orchestration, and the supporting cast give adequate performances, with Louise Winter doing an Ab Fab-style comic turn as Zazà’s embarrassingly dipsomaniac mother and Richard Burkhard stalwart as Cascart, the friend who tries to make Zazà see reason. Joel Montero sings erratically as the ghastly Milio – first-night nerves?
What lifts the evening is the marvellous acting of Holland Park’s resident diva, Anne Sophie Duprels. Ideally, one wants a soprano richer, deeper and warmer than hers in this lush music, but such is Duprels’s commitment and intelligence that nobody will feel short-changed. Without a trace of sentimentality or exaggeration, she traces both Zazà’s warmth of heart and her defensive peasant spirit, creating a persuasive and moving portrait of a woman who refuses to be either heroine or victim.
Until July 29. Tickets: 0300 999 1000; operahollandpark.com