Germany Puccini, La fanciulla del West: Soloists, Chor der Hamburgischen Staatsoper, Philharmonishces Staatsorchester Hamburg / Antonino Fogliani (conductor). Staatsoper Hamburg, 4.4.2025. (SRT)
When I first started getting into opera and discovered that Puccini had written a Western, La fanciulla del West struck me as a complete absurdity. Now it is probably the work of Puccini’s that I admire the most. If you accept that the orchestra is the hero (more of that below) then it is his most convincingly through-composed work, the motives interwoven convincingly and deployed symphonically to great effect, and once you get past the setting, the characters are sympathetic people of flesh and blood who you would much rather spend your time with than Scarpia or Calaf. The soaring rush of the orchestra when Minnie first appears might just be the greatest entrance music given to any character in opera, though Dick Johnson’s comes a close second, and there’s nothing in opera quite like the crazy scene at the end of Act II when Minnie and Rance play cards for Johnson’s life.
The Hamburg State Opera’s 2015 production is fairly abstract in its settings, a world away from the lavish realism that, until recently, you could have seen at Covent Garden or the Met. A few more props would have helped Vincent Lemaire’s designs to come to life, and it is self-defeating not to give Minnie’s hut an upstairs in which Johnson’s wounded body can be stashed. However, Vincent Boussard’s production speaks clearly to the characters’ development, and there is an entrancing moment during the second-act snowstorm when the curtain billows down to shield the scene from view, suggesting that Minnie and Johnson’s brief moment of passion contains more than just a kiss. The costumes aren’t period-specific, but they all look great, as well they should when you consider that they are designed by none other than Christian Lacroix.
The real interest in this performance, however, the last in this season’s run, was in the orchestral playing, and the marvellous way that the ebb and flow of Puccini’s score was shaped by conductor Antonino Fogliani. Those big, arching climaxes were built into the work’s overall argument, and every detail was cleanly articulated. The strings, in particular, sounded magnificent as they evoked the darkness of Rance’s passion for Minnie in Act I, then sounding jaded and empty for the desolate opening of Act III.
This run of performances marked Anna Pirozzi’s debut in the role of Minnie, and she sounded terrific in it. An announcement at the start begged the audience’s indulgence as she wasn’t feeling her best, though for the most part you could not have told. True, she sounded a bit worn out by the time of the final farewells, but elsewhere she sounded confident and assertive, cresting the climactic notes and summoning up marvellous vulnerability when she discovers Johnson’s true identity. This was also Gregory Kunde’s debut as Dick Johnson. The voice sounded a little pale at the top compared to how – let us say it – a younger tenor might have sounded, but he brought lyricism and warmth to the role, and it is great to hear it properly sung rather than bellowed the way a lot of Italian tenors do. Claudio Sgura’s Rance was a little grey around the edges but brought out all the contradictions in the sheriff’s character and got the balance just right in the first two acts between his love for Minnie and jealousy of his rival.
The chorus and the minor roles were all superbly taken, especially a golden sounding tenor from Mziwamadoda Sipho Nodlayiya’s Harry and a winning Nick from Andrew Dickinson, alongside a sonorous Ashby from Han Kim. Seeing them all line up to take their curtain calls at the end was a reminder that La fanciulla is an ensemble opera on the level of Die Meistersinger or Peter Grimes, and its uniqueness in Puccini’s output makes it treasurable rather than silly.
Simon Thompson
Creatives:
Director – Vincent Boussard
Set Designer – Vincent Lemaire
Costume Designer – Christian Lacroix
Lighting Designer – Guido Levi
Chorus director – Christian Günther
Cast included:
Minnie – Anna Pirozzi
Dick Johnson – Gregory Kunde
Jack Rance – Claudio Sgura
Nick – Andrew Dickinson
Ashby – Han Kim
Sonora – Tigran Martirossian
Trin – Paul Kaufmann