John Savournin’s production of Lehár’s The Merry Widow (1905) – a score particularly known and loved for its evocation of bittersweet nostalgia and sentiment – moves the action to the notably unsentimental, ungentle context of the New York mafiosi in the 1950s. It’s quite literally a world away from the decadence of a legendary pre-World War One Balkan community abroad in Paris. But the correspondences work very well between the bankrupt kingdom of Pontevedro seeking the Merry Widow’s inherited millions, and the tight-knit émigré circle of mafia gangs in America, with the boss ‘Don Zeta’ hoping to keep that fortune ‘in the family’. Indeed, rather than a quaint comedy about old social pedigrees and new money, as Savournin explains in the programme this modernised setting raises the stakes with what’s at issue and renders the work’s satire in this re-written scenario more biting, and the humour sardonic with the threat of being ‘taken out’ to those who fall out of line. (It also sounds like the capricious exercise of political patronage by Trump over his circle of stooges and flunkeys.)
Lehár’s alternately upbeat and innocently gentle score is of a different temper to that new scenario, but the words and rhymes of David Eaton’s lyrics for the musical numbers fit their lively, foot-tapping rhythms surprisingly well and don’t feel forced. The mafia setting also feels less incongruous than, say, the conventionally lavish, old-world ambience of Cal McCrystal’s new production for Glyndebourne last year (which many will have seen in its Christmas TV broadcast, if not at the theatre) that introduced a frankly crude Carry On-style smuttiness and Strictly Come Dancing choreographic routines. As an idea, Savournin’s concept maintains the sophistication of Lehár’s original.
A bold, confident rendition from the Orchestra of Scottish Opera under Anna Castro Grinstein’s baton (only in this performance – Stuart Bedford in all the others) suits the mood of a booming, brash New York after the Second World War. Although a reduction of the score is used (with, incidentally, Lehár’s often omitted full Overture) there is no loss of instrumental colour or sparkle; the lush sonorities accompanying the number for Zeta’s wife, Valentina, with her paramour Camille in Act Two are positively (Richard) Straussian.
The performers ham up their American accents to create a comic aura, not least Paula Sides as a shrill-voiced Widow (Hanna Glawari), here the somewhat coarse but well-meaning daughter of a Tennessee farmer who has unexpectedly found herself rich through her late husband’s Sicilian lemon tree grove. But Sides’s signing soars effortlessly, particularly in a delightful account of the ‘Vilja’ Song, which she gives at the party she throws for the mafia families at her villa in Sicily. Alex Otterburn is an unassuming Danilo, her frustrated old flame who eventually overcomes his awkwardness and re-establishes his attachment to Hanna. Henry Waddington is an avuncular Don Zeta, much more the time-honoured, blustering patriarchal figure of an opera buffa than a criminal or thuggish figure, and Rhian Lois as his wife – brittle and forward – shows who wears the trousers. Camille de Rosillon with whom she has a flirtation (the cause of the operetta’s subplot about the ownership of a fan) is cast here as a French cabaret jazz singer (not as an aristocratic attaché) which William Morgan does with some raffish aplomb, though a rough edge creeps into his singing in affecting the relevant foreign accent. That hardly compromises the Sicilians (Cascada and Briochi) or the Slavs (the Bogdanovitches and Kromows) however since they have so little to sing, and their larger-than-life characterisations aid the cause of the work’s farcical elements.
Savournin also notes that it’s the opulent, rich world of the operetta that is an important part of its attraction, and that’s what comes across in the designer takis’s stylish, uncluttered sets and in this ultimately fun, good-natured re-interpretation of Lehár’s charming work.
The post Opera Holland Park 2025 – Lehár’s The Merry Widow – with Paula Sides, Alex Otterburn, Henry Waddington & Rhian Lois; directed by John Savournin; conducted by Anna Castro Grinstein appeared first on The Classical Source.
