Digging for gold

I think it’s fair to say that Puccini’s gold-rush opera (written in 1910) doesn’t really redeem its source in quite the way his other pieces do. The pretty-much forgotten David Belasco ― a kind of American Stanislavsky, who reigned over New York theatreland as writer, impresario, producer, director for decades ― had already provided Puccini with a source play for the roaring success of Madama Butterfly, so when the composer was stumped for something to set, he turned again to his lucky playwright, and his Girl of the Golden West. 

Puccini knew this was a pretty raggedy old potboiler, but after all he had transfigured such things before ― that Butterfly, and Victorien Sardou’s torture-the-women romp La Tosca, turning them from ephemera into the mythic creatures we know ― so perhaps he could do the same with this old beast? But even though it has all the Puccini ingredients (except actual death), and a sturdy heroine who’s ready to really go the extra mile for love, and plenty of conflict and redemption, it never really reaches escape velocity … and that’s even before you factor in the inadvertent comedy that we can never get over of these cowboy types being all operatic and Italian. 

Director Martin Lloyd-Evans confronts and overcomes this in the boldest possible way from the off, a big-hatted Man in Black stalking downstage before the music even starts. The stage itself is all sepia tones, saloon bar-room, a street of wooden facades straight from a million movies, but though everyone may look terribly familiar in their shabby Western gear, big hair and beards and millinery, Lloyd-Evans does a tremendous amount of work in the first five minutes to dispel the giggles and clichés by the simple expedient of making the big crowd of Forty-Niners (a dozen named roles, plus chorus) absolutely individual and alive and real with a bunch of little stories played out and cleverly highlighted in the first scene, in itself a brilliantly-crafted thing that pretty much lays out all the show’s themes, dramatic and musical, even before the ecstatic entrance of la fanciulla herself, Minnie, to a swooping Elgarian theme.  

Minnie is the point of the show, naturally, and its great strength, but also its fatal flaw: the no-longer-young (ie, maybe 30) chatelaine of The Polka, an isolated mountain saloon catering to the rag-tag miners who have flocked to California from all over the world. Minnie is way too good to be true: their virginal, Bible-teaching house-mother, beloved and discreetly lusted after, but keeping her virtue through their respect and innate decency, etc, not to mention the handy Palms whorehouse (and its Minnie-anti-matter bosschick Nina Micheltorena) not far away, occasionally referred to with some delicacy. Well, that all goes out the window when bad boy (disguised) bandit Dick Johnson pops up: Minnie lurves him instantly, and turns into a hell-cat when the boys decide (pretty much correctly) to string him up. 

So our Minnie has to cover a lot of bases, and Amanda Echalaz does an admirable job, from motherly to girlish to impassioned Hyrcanian tigress, entirely believable in each, even if the whole gal is a bit much to take. It’s always been a many-hued, dramatic voice; she was a big young name here a few years ago before decamping to the States, and it’s marvellous to have her back on the stage where she made a massive impression as Tosca in 2008. Of course the voice is darker and heavier, with smoky depths and rich overtones, but she has the same hypnotising magnetism as ever.

Dick is a less interesting character, but also done with a lot of style and passion and depth by Jose de Eca. The big male role is really the sheriff, Jack Rance, usually played as a doomy guy who’s getting on but holds a candle for Minnie ― and takes it pretty badly when she starts batting her eyelids at Johnson, not least because he has a pretty shrewd idea who Johnson really is. And a surprising and rather marvellous thing happens here: Rance is sung by Robert Hayward, an eminent Wagnerian, and the moment he comes on stage ― he’s the dude in black ― you understand that this is an American Wotan, conflicted, compromised, but essentially the moral heart of the show… and the best way to rip this dramatic flim-flam into something big, timeless, properly operatic. It doesn’t necessarily work ― that’s the thing about Fanciulla ― but it’s a smart, original and effective ploy that adds layers. At the heart of the opera are big scenes between Minnie and Dick and Minnie and Jack that may lack the musical payoff of Bohème and Tosca but at least teeter on the brink of making the actual characters a good deal more interesting. The thing is, Minnie and Jack could (probably should) easily have made a go of it together; correctly viewed, her waltzing off with nogoodnik Johnson is seriously unlikely to work out.

So the opera’s ending is a bit of a poser. Minnie of course comes riding in (alas, no horses here) and saves Dick from a lynching, talking the murderous miners round so that in two minutes flat they are waving a tearful farewell to her and Dick as they ride off into the sunset. Yes, right. But this is Puccini, of course, who can uncork music to persuade your heart of the unlikeliest things at the drop of a hat ― and also the Puccini who in the end, it turns out, couldn’t finish things off without at least a symbolic death. Long before Shane, this is far more than a regular sunset, almost a double suicide, as the back of the stage opens up and the couple head off into orange, swirling smoke. Not just that, but what’s to become of the miners, or Jack, without Minnie? It’s all pretty tragic, really, and the elegiac, wistful playout lets all the layers speak for themselves.

Holland Park have dug down to make a big, rich, satisfying show out of a decent set of ingredients that still need to be manhandled into effective form: a great effort from everyone, from Matthew Waldren’s assiduous and generous-hearted conducting (and the pocket sized orchestra sounding pretty good), to some really filled-out minor roles, a hard-working chorus, and an atmospheric design by Anna Reid and Jamie Platt that manipulates the park theatre’s unhelpful stage to maximum effect.