Skip to main contentSkip to navigationSkip to navigation
Susan Bullock and Peter Auty in The Girl of the Golden West
Peter Auty and Susan Bullock in The Girl of the Golden West. Photograph: John Snelling/Getty Images Photograph: John Snelling/Getty Images
Peter Auty and Susan Bullock in The Girl of the Golden West. Photograph: John Snelling/Getty Images Photograph: John Snelling/Getty Images

The Girl of the Golden West review – true to Puccini’s California dream

This article is more than 9 years old
Coliseum, London
ENO’s version of the opera comes close to sending up the action but its detailed portrayal of the mining community is compelling

You could, I suppose, convincingly transplant Puccini’s goldrush opera to an oil-boom town in Scotland or Norway towards the end of the 20th century, but the sense of place in La Fanciulla del West, The Girl of the Golden West in ENO’s version, is so pervasive that even Richard Jones keeps his new production firmly rooted in the California mountains. Electricity and neon lights may have come to the Polka saloon, but its clientele is still gun-toting and derby-hatted; Minnie’s log cabin still has few mod cons, and the third act is played out in front of the marshal’s office, which very clearly still operates according to lynch law.

Despite its fidelity to Puccini’s setting, Jones’s production comes close to sending up some of the action, in an opera in which characterisation is never a strong point. But the detailed portrayal of the miners’ all-male community is always telling, and really comes into its own in the beautifully staged final scene, as Minnie begs for Johnson’s life, reminding each of the miners in turn of what she has given them: the vengeful collective is transformed into a collection of compassionate individuals.

It’s the payoff that the evening really needs, for, despite some fine performances, especially in the smaller roles, such as Graham Clark as Nick the bartender and Leigh Melrose as Sonora, a real sense of who the protagonists are often seems to be missing. That’s partly the fault of the opera itself, though not entirely. There’s more to Jack Rance than the two-dimensional bully that Craig Colclough makes him, and surely a more dashing, heroic element to Dick Johnson than the rather soft-grained Peter Auty allows.

But Susan Bullock judges Minnie’s character more precisely, and one or two moments of shrillness apart, gives the central character the feistiness and emotional ballast the drama needs. The conductor Keri-Lynn Wilson gets full value out of the score orchestrally, too, even if it’s sometimes at the expense of its subtler shades.

Comments (…)

Sign in or create your Guardian account to join the discussion

Most viewed

Most viewed