DAVID MELLOR
La Ciociara
Wexford Festival Opera Until November 5 ★★★★☆
The problem for the estimable Wexford Festival Opera is that it specialises not so much in neglected operas, but all too often in ones that have been completely ignored.
Such a one is La Ciociara (Two Women), composed by Marco Tutino as recently as 2015 for a premiere at the San Francisco Opera and then vanished without trace, as have all of Tutino’s other efforts. Indeed, neither it, nor any of Tutino’s other operas have ever, to my knowledge, received a professional performance in the British Isles.
Some of my colleagues have been queuing up to denounce it as derivative, but I thought it absorbing, and at times inspired and especially well sung by the cast, all of whom rose to the work’s many challenges. Okay, you could say that the music is superior film music, but there’s a place for that. I certainly wouldn’t hesitate to see this again.
It’s all based on Alberto Moravia’s novel, later turned into a film, directed by Vittorio de Sica, and produced by Carlo Ponti, the husband of the then up-andcoming Neapolitan film star, Sophia Loren. At first Loren was going to play the role of the daughter, but later took on the part of the mother, a far more intensely dramatic and involving part, which won her an Oscar.
In the opera, it remains the central, and most challenging role, really well taken here by Na’ama Goldman. Her tragic relationship with Michele dominates both the film and the opera. And Michele is also very well sung here by the young tenor Leonardo Caimi.
It would be nice to think that this opera will not sink without trace yet again. In the right hands, like those of the gifted conductor
Francesco Cilluffo and the festival’s artistic director Rosetta Cucchi, who really believes in the piece, this can and should win at least a small place in the repertory.
Well done, Wexford. Everything the festival stands for can be found in this piece, which I am truly delighted to have had the chance to experience, as did a really enthusiastic audience. And we never would have were it not for Wexford.