A superb sense of community: Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana at Blackheath Halls Opera

Mascagni: Cavalleria Rusticana; Katherine Broderick, Oliver Johnston, Janis Kelly, Michel de Souza, Idunnu Münch, director: Harry Fehr, conductor: Chris Stark, Blackheath Halls Opera;  Blackheath Halls
Reviewed 24 September 2024

Professionals and non-professionals come together to create a real sense of community in a production that had real clarity to the story telling and strong performances from all concerned.

A bell rings and the villagers fill the stage with movement and song. At the heart of Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana are the villagers themselves; the whole action takes place in and around village events with the Easter Hymn as one of the centrepieces. So, the opera makes a lot of sense for a community company like Blackheath Halls Opera. For their 2024 production at Blackheath Halls, the company brought together the community performers of Blackheath Halls Chorus, Blackheath Halls Orchestra and Blackheath Halls Youth Opera Company, students for Charlton Park Academy and Greenvale School, under musical director Chris Stark and director Harry Fehr for Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana (seen 23 September 2024). Katherine Broderick was Santuzza, Oliver Johnston was Turiddu, Janis Kelly was Mamma Lucia, Michel de Souza was Alfio and Idunnu Münch was Lola. Designs were by Elliott Squire and Alice McNicholas. Students and recent graduates from Trinity Laban provided section leaders for the chorus and the orchestral brass section.

With no pit and a relatively confined stage, Elliott Squire’s imaginative set design placed the orchestra in a triangle in front of the stage, and the matching triangle was used as an acting area linked to the stage, complete with platform set up as the nave of the church, by steps. The result looked striking in repose and proved an effective setting for the production’s use of its large chorus. The costumes were loosely contemporary, and Alice McNicholas created a remarkable pastel palate for the villagers’ Easter best.

Harry Fehr’s direction had an elegant clarity to it. The production centred on three major communal moments, the opening Sunday morning, the Easter Hymn and the community meal. These formed the backdrop for the drama, and this was presented with clarity and imagination. Cavalleria Rusticana has quite a back story, and Fehr made this apparent during the prelude when we saw the events of the previous evening when Turiddu visits Lola, though he has told people he is out of town, and is seen both by Santuzza and Alfio.

Visually Katherine Broderick made a surprisingly demure-looking Santuzza, albeit one who had a strong tendency to burst into tears. This was countered by the rich immediacy of her voice with Broderick singing with a wonderfully ample sense of line that underlined the intensity of Santuzza’s passion. Broderick made Santuzza engaging in a way that does not always happen with this character, and it helped that at a couple of key moments we saw Santuzza’s fantasies including a wedding with Turiddu during the intermezzo. Broderick’s career is currently focused on the Wagnerian repertoire, but having heard her Santuzza I do hope that we might hear her as some of Verdi’s more dramatic heroines.

Oliver Johnston brought great substance to Turiddu, making him weak but well-meaning, stupidly trying to have is cake and eat it. It helped that Johnston’s sense of line was rich and ample, so that his scenes with Broderick’s Santuzza were vivid. The moment at the end when his passion for Santuzza erupts as he asks his mother to care for her was overwhelming. In 2025 Johnston is at Opera North singing Erik in Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman as well as appearances with WNO and Garsington, he is definitely a talent to watch.

Idunnu Münch made a very feisty Lola, revelling in her ability to attract Turiddu and enjoying Santuzza’s discomfiture. It is not a particularly large part, yet Münch’s portrayal of Lola made the character particularly telling. Michel de Souza was a more fine-grained Alfio than usual, put-upon rather than a bully. This was a man at the end of his tether.  Janis Kelly made Mamma Lucia very much the lynch-pin of the drama, at once sympathetic and severe, and definitely someone that her unruly son Turiddu is fond of and frightened of.

The opera was sung in Edmund Tracey’s classic English translation and everyone did an admirable task of projecting the words. We had surtitles, but hardly needed them.

This was a superb communal exercise, and the chorus were not only clearly enjoying themselves but had a fine sense of presence and sang with lusty strength and no little sensitivity. The orchestra was similarly impressive, this is not easy stuff. The orchestral prelude and intermezzo were finely expressive and there were some lovely moments throughout.

Harry Fehr’s production did not quite make you believe that passions were so high that at the end, Alfio would cut Turiddu’s throat though the off-stage reaction of the women who announced the death was terrific. But what Fehr and his cast of professionals and non-professionals did was securely establish the sense of this community coming together and providing a backdrop so that the soloists’ characters felt part of the whole. A fine achievement all round.