Forgotten opera Francesca da Rimini deserves a sparkier staging — review

Always read the fine print. Francesca da Rimini did not, which is how she ended up married to the deformed and vengeful Lanciotto, not his handsome little brother Paolo, whom she had been presented. The doomed bride — a real person Dante incorporated into his Divine Comedy — inspired more than one opera. The best-known version, by Riccardo Zandonai (1914), eclipsed Saverio Mercadante’s 1830-31 iteration, not least because the latter was never performed during the composer’s lifetime; bitter rivalries between singers were said to have scuppered the planned premieres.

A belated disinterment at the Festival della Valle d’Itria in Martina Franca seven years ago paved the way for the German premiere of the piece in Frankfurt. Hans Walter Richter’s new production was made for Tyrol’s conservative Festival House in Erl, which perhaps explains its stultifying traditionalism.

Johannes Leiacker’s spare set is filled with portentous objects — a giant rock, a bed, a bunch of lilies. The walls are white for the first act, black for the second. A gap opens in the rear wall to reveal a fantasy space filled with stage smoke and dancer doubles. Why does anybody do this? Dancers on the opera stage make the singers seem stumpy and stiff, while the singers make the dancers look mute and anaemic. It does nobody any favours.

For the rest of it, Raphaela Rose’s costumes are stylised-historical, and the whole thing has the dreamy gothic look of a graphic novel — simplified, somewhat vacuous. Mercadante’s score is fascinating, a kind of missing link between Rossini and Verdi: a lot of ornamental arias with show-off runs and high notes, the strings chugging beneath, but also spine-chilling ensembles and dark washes of orchestral colour. These neglected operas help us to understand and contextualise the evolution of old favourites.

Ramón Tabar conducted with force and velocity, and the singers did their best with Mercadante’s hysterical vocal lines. Jessica Pratt, who should have been the star of the show as Francesca, with her honeyed timbre and fabulous agility, sang a lot of this a whisker under pitch. Kelsey Lauritano, in the trouser role of Paolo, had great subtlety and fantastic diction, but her voice was too small for this role in this house. Theo Lebow, a metallic, slightly nasal Lanciotto, navigated his role’s stratospheric heights with guts and heroism.

Polite applause for the cast and a round of boos for the direction team followed; the Frankfurt audience made it clear where their loyalties lay. If this forgotten opera is worth dusting off for a modern audience, it is also worth a better production than this.

★★★☆☆

To April 8, oper-frankfurt.de