Puccini’s first opera brought thrillingly back to life
Classical
Le Willis
Opera Rara, Royal Festival Hall
★★★★★
By Rupert Christiansen
‘We have here not a young student but a new Bizet or Massenet,” wrote a reviewer in 1884, after hearing the premiere of Puccini’s first operatic exercise, Le Willis. Not a new Verdi, note, because at that point he was considered old hat, but instead someone who could rival the fashionable Gallic eroticism and sensationalism of Carmen or Manon.
Also note that this is Le Willis. Puccini lovers may know of the two-act Le Villi, occasionally exhumed and recorded: but here that score was presented in its original one-act form, written for a competition and subsequently expanded on the crest of its success. Opera Rara’s splendid concert allowed us to hear this novelty in its original form for the first time in 134 years, and it proved a winner.
The feeble wisp of plot loosely follows the same lines as that of the ballet Giselle, in which an innocent maiden betrayed by her lover dies and becomes a vengeful spirit. It may be notable only for the trope of victimised womanhood that would remain one of Puccini’s staple obsessions, but its clichés are milked with irresistible gusto and the music just gushes forth. In its lushness and emotional immediacy, the idiom does indeed bear the hallmarks of Carmen and Manon, but there is a sense of an authentically individual style evolving as well, especially in the grandly lachrymose trio that brings the first scene to a glorious climax. Anyone would award this student essay an A for effort, ambition and promise; the eloquence of its melodies seems more like a gift from God.
There are three soloists. Ermonela Jaho played the winsome heroine: her transports of emotion were rather old-school operatic in manner, but she gave her all, drawing on vocal reserves belied by her ballerina figure. Arsen Soghomonyan revealed a warm, mellifluous tenor as the faithless lover and Brian Mulligan did the business efficiently as the heroine’s stern father. To the delight of a large and appreciative audience, Jaho and Soghomonyan sang arias that Puccini added to the extended version as encores.
The first half of the evening had been imaginatively programmed to include pieces that offered interesting glosses on the young Puccini’s musical thinking. Bizet’s robustly Provençal suite for L’arlésienne, and Verdi’s exhilaratingly satanic ballet music for the 1865 recension of Macbeth were both played with terrific verve by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by the evening’s maestro Mark Elder, who seemed to be enjoying himself as much as the rest of us.