A great cowboy story: The Girl of the Golden West at the English National Opera review

We're all so familiar with Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns that it's easy to forget that he wasn't the first Italian to turn his hand to making a great cowboy story: Puccini did it 50 years earlier. By an odd coincidence, it is also 50 years since the English national opera last commissioned a new production of Girl of the Golden West and watching Richard Jones' excellent staging of this gold rush love story makes one wonder why they waited so long.

The opening act, set in the Polka saloon, sets the scene. A large, all-male chorus, dressed just like the extra in any number of westerns, rampages around the stage, fighting, drinking, dancing, singing, boasting, card-playing and chatting up Minnie, the saloon owner, just as cowboys are meant to do. But there was trouble lurking in them thar hills outside the saloon, where the bandit Ramerrez was known to be lurking and planning to steal the miners' gold. 

Then a stranger who gives his name as Dick Johnson enters the saloon and recognises Minnie as the woman of his dreams whom he had met only briefly once before. Sheriff Jack Rance. who is suspicious of strangers anyway, takes an instant dislike to the new arrival, intensified by the fact that he wants Minnie for himself. 

I must admit that during this opening act, I thought there were too many cowboys on stage and it was rather cluttered and confusing, but that feeling vanished after the interval when the action moved to Minnie's cabin in the mountains.  

By this time, Minnie has fallen in love with the mysterious Mr Johnson, and her love only suffers a temporary blip when she discovers that he is none other than Ramerrez the bandit in disguise. When Rance and his men come in search of the bandit, Johnson hides under the bed upstairs and we appreciate how well Miriam Buether has designed the set: not only does it look like a fairy-tale cowboy cabin, but it does exactly what Puccini needs by providing a hiding place within a small area. 

For the final act, Buether repeats her trick of producing a perfect film-set design for the sheriff's office in town. Ramerrez has been captured and the sheriff is cackling with glee as he looks forward to a good old-fashioned hanging, But it all ends happily for everyone except the sheriff, as Minnie arrives in the nick of time to plead with the townsfolk to free the poor fellow, reminding them of all she has done for them in the past, and telling them that her lover is now reformed and has turned his back on a life of crime.

It's Calamity Jane meets Madame Butterfly, and with the yelping, thigh-slapping cowboys meeting Puccini's glorious romantic music, it works astonishingly well. 

The three leading roles are all excellently performed. Susan Bullock has a gloriously powerful soprano voice, perfectly suited to the role of the heroic and fearless Minnie. She sounded a little below her best when straining for the top notes at the start, but as she eased into it, the tone improved. Peter Auty and Craig Colclough gave fine performances as Dick Johnson and Sheriff Rance, acting with all the swagger one expects of proper cowboys.

Kelley Rourke's translation of the original libretto was also spot on, turning the Italian into American-English lyrics that fitted both the theme and the music. With such a male-dominated cast (apart from Susan Bullock, of course), it was good to see Keri-Lynn Wilson conducting the orchestra.

This was her first appearance at the ENO and her assurance in tackling Puccini's difficult score was a considerable factor in the success of the performance.

With sets, voices, costume, orchestra and overall direction all perfectly coordinated, this was as good a production as one can hope for of one of Puccini's least seen mature operas.

Tickets: eno.org or 020 7845 9300 (until November 1)