From Scottish Opera’s co-production with Holland Park Opera:
‘The Merry Widow is all about displaced people – originally, the fictitious Pontevedrians are displaced in France – so the world of Italian-American Mafia families finding their place in New York feels like a perfect comparison, and the characters fit the mould beautifully’. For instance, Baron Zeta becomes Don Zeta, head of a powerful family…Once you update, the social strata starts to break down,’ says (translator) David Eaton. ‘The place that strata remains is the Mafia, with its sense of family loyalty and things you can and can’t do. Although they traditionally remain background characters, the women are incredibly powerful in that Mafia world. It was really nice to find this place with family and social structure, but where women had agency and power.’ David hopes the audience will go along with this bold new updating: ‘opera can be a terrible mafia sometimes.’
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