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Puccini’s La fanciulla del West is set in Gold Rush California in the 1840s. When it premiered in 1910, the setting presumably had novelty value, but audiences today might all too easily see the opera through a haze of cowboy stereotypes. Opera Holland Park is prepared to take that risk, last night opening its 2026 season (the company’s 30th) with Martin Lloyd-Evans’ new production.
Puccini himself couldn’t solve the problem that there are too many roles, too many incidental details, but at its centre, there’s a basic threesome: la fanciulla (“girl”) is Minnie, who’s never danced, never been kissed, despite owning the bar where local miners drink. The town sheriff, Jack Rance, fancies her but she’s not interested. Enter Dick Johnson, a figure from Minnie’s past and also a bandit in disguise. She takes a shine to him and invites him to her cabin; cue her first kiss. Rance storms in, searching for the bandit; he shoots him, but Dick survives; after much ado, he and Minnie leave together in search of a new life: an unusually happy (if not entirely convincing) ending for a Puccini opera.
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The Holland Park stage is not easy to energise. Lloyd-Evans makes it into, effectively, two stages, one close to the audience, the other farther away, with the orchestra placed between. For the most part it works, although the scene in Minnie’s cabin loses intimacy by being placed in the distance. Anna Reid’s costumes don’t entirely avoid cliche: when Rance first appears, his cowboy hat and sheriff’s badge raise a few sniggers.
OHP’s resident orchestra, City of London Sinfonia conducted by Matthew Kofi Waldren, is on the small side for Puccini but is on such boisterous form that its size is not an issue. The large cast and chorus are equally energetic, with some telling cameos in smaller roles.
Puccini may not have given his central trio of soloists the kind of stand-and-deliver showpiece arias that we hear in most of his operas, but they do not get an easy ride. As Rance, Robert Hayward brings Wagnerian weight and volume to the role, sometimes at the expense of characterisation. José de Eça skilfully handles the fiendish part of Dick Johnson with only occasional signs of strain, almost managing to convince us that the bandit has really seen the light and found the true way: no mean feat.
Minnie is the motor that drives the drama, and Amanda Echalaz catches both her innocence and her fierce determination. Under pressure, of which there is plenty, there is a rawness in her voice that is exciting, but there is also something melancholy in her timbre that adds depth to a character who can all too easily seem unworldly.
Ends June 12; operahollandpark.com
