Zanetto/Susanna’s Secret review – swooning melodies, colour and wit

Following on from last year’s Lammermuir festival to which they brought one of Britten’s stylised, quasi-religious Church Parables, Scottish Opera returned with a pair of contrasting one-act operas. Wolf-Ferrari’s Susanna’s Secret, a witty comedy of manners and misunderstanding, is a work that gets more than an occasional outing; the same cannot be said of Pietro Mascagni’s Zanetto, apparently receiving its Scottish premiere here 120 years after its first performance.

Zanetto is a melodrama-tinged piece, not so much a rounded one-act opera as a sketch detailing an encounter between its two characters: Silvia, a worldly-wise courtesan, here played by soprano Sinéad Campbell-Wallace, and Zanetto, a carefree travelling minstrel (mezzo Hanna Hipp). In best Brief Encounter fashion, they meet, connect and ultimately go their separate ways. It’s an operatic storm in a teacup; nothing really happens to justify Mascagni’s passionate, overwhelming music, at times reminiscent of his more familiar Cavalleria Rusticana. But it’s easy to sit back and let the swooning melodies overwhelm, especially here given the richly sung performances, Campbell-Wallace’s powerful but burnished soprano sinuously intertwining with Hipp’s seductive darker hues.

Susanna’s Secret is a different work altogether, a frothy comedy-farce about a woman so desperate to hide her nicotine habit from her husband that he thinks she’s having an affair. Clare Presland and Richard Burkhard reprised their roles from Opera Holland Park’s summer production with beguiling vivacity and charm, with Piran Legg showing a droll sense of comic timing in the silent role of the family’s factotum.

Director Rosie Purdie kept the staging in both minimal – the hint of an orange grove in Zanetto, a table and chairs and a vase of flowers in Susanna’s Secret – but it added colour to the performances. Conductor David Parry and the Orchestra of Scottish Opera brought the score to life with energy and enthusiasm, although at times the sound risked being a little overwhelming in the spacious acoustic of St Mary’s.