OPERA REVIEW: La Rondine - The Lowry Theatre, Salford.

Puccini is at his finest when he is breaking someone’s heart. “La Rondine” (“The Swallow”) is a quietly elegant opera of soft sensitivity, and Opera North’s production resets it in the 1930s. Sung in Italian, this performance was at the Lowry, Salford.

Soprano Galina Averina was almost too sweet in both persona and singing voice to be playing a Parisian mistress, but as the leading character of Magda she was delightful. Her silken voice rippled lightly through the score, and she radiated a luminous charm. Tenor Sebastien Gueze was almost like a prince out of a fairy tale as her new love interest Ruggero, and together they were a couple in love that was so delicately radiant in both performance and sound, it was almost as if they didn’t need stage lighting.

Soprano Claire Lees brought the operetta element to it as the lively and witty maid Lisette, especially when stealing her mistress’s clothes to go on a date with her boyfriend. Tenor Elgan Llyr Thomas partnered her as the cynical and underfunded poet Prunier, setting up the themes of romantic love in the first act, and then proceeding to spit all over them as the opera progressed, with a sardonic delivery. Baritone Philip Smith was intimidating and powerful as Magda’s wealthy protector, Rambaldo.

There was lovely ensemble work from the three other mistresses in the initial party scene: Yvette, Bianca and Suzy, performed by soprano Pasquale Orchard, soprano Kathryn Sharpe and soprano Laura Kelly McEnroy. Their voices bubbled with feminine gleefulness as they had a little behind-the-scenes sharing without their protectors around, while kicking off their elegant shoes and rubbing their feet – reminding us that this was their work, not their own passion.

Leslie Traver’s set design was built around the geometric structures of the art deco period, not being particularly French, but still very much interwar. Gabrielle Dalton’s costumes were very beautiful, beginning first with the evening gowns and suits of the cocktail party – the four mistresses in dresses of either gold or silver were especially stunning – and then moving into more simple cotton garments to suggest the wholesome life out in the countryside. The lighting design of Paule Constable and Ben Pickersgill ranged from evening lamps to golden French sunshine in the morning.

Conductor Oliver Rundell created a dreamy, playful soundscape of Puccini’s score. Director James Hurley didn’t quite get the shame of being a former courtesan into the work, but still drew the audience into a spellbound timeslip for the evening.

Reviewer - Thalia Terpsichore
on - 17.11.23