Turandot, Opera Holland Park, 23 June 2026

Images: Pablo Strong

Princess Turandot – Anne Sophie Duprels
Calaf – José de Eça
Liù – Fflur Wyn
Timur – Jihoon Kim
Ping – Josef Jeongmeen Ahn
Pang – Joseph Buckmaster
Pong – Zwakele Tshabalala
Emperor Altoun – Robert Burt
Mandarin – Wonsick Oh
Prince of Persia – Jamie Formoy
Young Turandot – Lara Ronxin Quattrone

Opera Holland Park Youth Chorus (chorus master: Joe Cummings)

Opera Holland Park Chorus (chorus master: Richard Harker)

City of London Sinfornia

Naomi Woo (conductor)

Celebrating its thirtieth anniversary and the centenary of Puccini’s death, Opera Holland Park completed its set of the composer’s operas with a semi-staging of his final, unfinished work, Turandot. One might wish for a full staging, but one cannot have everything—and relatively little was lost. This made for a fitting crown to a season far from over, or perhaps better an extended encore to its new Fanciulla del West.

Anne-Sophie Duprels and José de Eça (previously Dick Johnson) came together to do something strikingly both similar and different as Turandot and Calaf. Their performances proved to be on a similarly outstanding level too, once again as fine a dramatic soprano and tenor as I can recall hearing at Holland Park—and considerably superior to those one might encounter at many of the opera firmament’s starriest houses. Whatever the dramaturgical depravity of the work – a big ‘whatever’ – both navigated its difficult, some might say impossible, relationship between fantasy and realism with all the fine attention to words, line, and their combination one could hope for. Duprels’s Turandot stood and sang on the threshold of a new life, slowly warming as much as melting. De Eça’s ardour swept all before it, Fflur Wyn and Jihoon Kim’s compassionate Liù and Timur included—which, alas, is as it should be. Wonsick Oh’s Mandarin was a chilling, yet human – indeed, human partly on that account – master of ceremonies, ably assisted by the protean solo-ensemblists of Josef Jeongmeen Ahn, Joseph Buckmaster, and Zwakele Tshabalala’s Ping, Pang, and Pong. Robert Burt’s Emperor Altoun and Jamie Formoy’s Prince of Persia afforded vivid, crucial, ‘smaller’ contributions.  

The role of the chorus is particular important in this opera. Opera Holland Park’s Chorus and Youth Chorus both impressed, both in themselves and in combination with the City of London Sinfonia, which again gave a mighty impression of a much larger band. The CLS now sound like old Puccini hands, which of course they are: warm, incisive, steely by turns, relishing and communicating the ripe post-Wagnerism and still astonishing modernism of the score in equal measure. If there were a few moments when any orchestral reduction would suffer by comparison with the full score, Tony Burke’s resourceful work, strange electronic organ intervention aside, contributed greatly to the success of the performance. A panoply of percussion enhanced the musical theatre of cruelty, as well as looking forward to the later twentieth century.

So too did Naomi Woo’s conducting, screwing up the tension where required and richly expansive where called for. Echoes of Debussy, Stravinsky, Schoenberg and others were relished, as, equally important, were the many cases in which Puccini takes the lead and others follow. It was difficult not to hear sentiments of Dallapiccola’s Il prigioniero, for instance, not least in the arguably still more twisted combination of torture and hope on offer here. As ever, that tantalising early morning conversation between Puccini and Schoenberg, when the ailing elder composer travelled to Florence for the Italian premiere of Pierrot Lunaire, hovered in the musical air. Holland Park’s celebrated peacock chorus contributed vocal embellishments, apparently as engaged with the sadistic dramaturgy as the rest of us. If Franco Alfano’s completion remains unsatisfactory, we cannot always hope for Berio. It has the merits at least of bringing to the surface in its listless wagnerismo parallels – arguably more than that – with Siegfried and Brünnhilde. 

Eleanor Burke’s direction was an equal partner in that (as, of course, were our Calaf and Turandot). The semi-staging concentrated, naturally, on character and narrative, and did so very well, whilst nonetheless framing their unfolding with reference to a child, the young princess, first having opened her music box and later handing it to the cruel princess she was to become. The importance both of childhood experience and of the problematical yet fascinating tension between Carlo Gozzi’s commedia dell’arte and Puccini’s realism was brought to our attention, for us to ponder and experience as our minds and mindsets permitted. This was not the place really for an overarching concept, though we were free to contribute one as we wished. Dress, as opposed to full-scale costume, was stylish in red and black. 

This was, then, another distinguished production from Opera Holland Park. A good number of audience members raised their hands at the outset, when asked by CEO and Director of Opera James Clutton if this were their first time. It is difficult to imagine they would have been anything other than greatly impressed, just as the rest of us were. For there was no mistaking the warmth and sincerity of the final applause. What next? Dare we hope for the aforementioned Dallapiccola, perhaps in tandem with Busoni’s Turandot? Someone should, at any rate.

Margot la Rouge and Le Villi, Opera Holland Park, 23 July 2022

Margot, Anna – Anne Sophie Duprels
Sergeant Thibault – Samuel Sakker
L’Artiste – Paul Carey Jones
Lili Béguin – Sarah Minns
Nini – Laura Lolita Perešivana
La Patronne – Laura Woods
First Soldier – George von Bergen
La Poigne – Jack Holton
Second Soldier – Alistair Sutherland
Totor – David Woloszko
First Woman – Chloé Pardoe
First Drinker – Sean Webster
Second Drinker – Matthew Duncan
Third Drinker, A Man – Peter Lidbetter
Waiter – Richard Moore
Police Inspector – Dragoş Andrei Ionel
Roberto – Peter Auty
Guglielmo – Stephen Gadd
Dancers – Fern Grimbley, Isabel Le Cras, Gabriella Schmidt

Martin Lloyd-Evans (director)
takis (designs)
Jake Wiltshire (lighting)

Jami Reid-Quarrell (movement)

City of London Sinfonia

Opera Holland Park Chorus (chorus director: Dominic Ellis-Peckham)

Francesco Cilluffo (conductor)

Images: Ali Wright
Chorus, Le Villi

Opera Holland Park’s new double-bill of operatic rarities proves a great success, highly recommended to anyone slightly curious to hear works off the beaten track. Delius’s Margot la Rouge, written from 1901-2 but unperformed until 1983, and Puccini’s first opera, Le Villi, here given in its 1884 two-act revision, were both unsuccessful entrants in the Milan publisher Sonzogno’s competition for new one-act operas. In Martin Lloyd-Evans’s production, both open with a father and his daughter, the unfortunate tales to follow initiated by the latter leaving the former. (Make of that what you will.)

Delius’s 45 minutes or so tell a straightforward story in which the woman Marguerite/Margot, fallen into Parisian prostitution, has a chance meeting with her childhood sweetheart, Thibauld, which rekindles their relationship, only for her pimp-lover, L’Artiste, to explode with anger, stab Thibauld, and in turn be stabbed by Margot, who is arrested. There is little in the way of dramatic conflict or surprise; people act precisely as one might expect them to. There is a frankly absurd number of cast-members for a work so short. But it is musically interesting, Delius not only at his most Wagnerian, but far more directed (or conventionally directed) than many of the composer’s more wandering scores. Lloyd Evans and his team summon up a seedy Paris bar, a storm, and various comings and goings with a gutsy verismo spirit that matches what one hears from orchestra and singers alike. If ultimately Margot la Rouge comes across more as a sketch in search of expansion, it certainly does not outstay its welcome and has much to fascinate audiences of various tastes.

Le Villi is, unsurprisingly, the more accomplished, finished work, the level of craftsmanship from Puccini at so early a stage in his career little short of astonishing. The Gothic tale has more in common with French and, perhaps still more, German Romanticism than one might expect. Here, takis’s shell of a bar transformed into a woodland house, Roberto and Anna, celebrating their betrothal, are separated by Roberto’s journey to Mainz to collect his inheritance. Waylaid by a Mainz ‘siren’, he fails to return, choosing instead a city life of debauchery, and Anna dies, her father calling for supernatural vengeance from the Villi who inhabit the forest. Roberto, having finally resolved to return home, meets these fairies instead of his beloved; they do as the legend foretells, dancing him to death.

Puccini is likewise not without Wagnerian influence here, but his truer predecessors seem to be earlier German (and again French) Romantics, as well as the purveyors of French grand opéra and ballet. For, in this early opera-ballet, what surprises most is just how much Puccini sounds like himself. Melodies, harmonies, scoring, if not so much characterisation: so much of his later mastery is already close—and sometimes more than close. Lloyd-Evans’s resourceful production takes full advantage of the magical descent into darkness an evening at Holland Park offers. Again, it tells the story directly, with a sharp eye for detail, and offers plenty for one to consider after the event, as indeed does the work itself.

Both orchestral reductions, by Andreas Luca Beraldo, seemed to me highly successful, in that I pretty much forgot we were not hearing quite the real thing. That success must also of course be attributed to Francesco Cilluffo and the City of London Sinfonia.  Cilluffo’s conducting, energetic yet long-breathed, was imbued with every inch of the conviction necessary to lift such scores off the page. The CLS sounded fuller of tone than many an opera house orchestra of twice the size. It drove the action as much as supported the singers in a true partnership between pit and stage. The Opera Holland Park Chorus, finely trained by Dominic Ellis-Peckham, proved both polished and enthusiastic in its singing—and game in its dancing too. Jami Reid-Quarrell’s choreography, whether for the chorus or the three Villi dancing, was sharp, illustrative, and dramatically conceived.

At the heart of both operas lay the outstanding singing of Anne Sophie Duprels: heartfelt, incisive, and variegated. She was poignantly partnered by Samuel Sakker as Thibauld in Margot la Rouge, Paul Carey Jones’s Artiste offering a contrasting, commanding, and vicious stage presence. The size of the cast offered a host of young singers opportunities to shine, all of them well taken. As Le Villi’s Roberto, Peter Auty might have graced any operatic stage. His marriage of vocal heft, lyricism, and command of detail fully complemented Duprels. Stephen Gadd’s performance as Anna’s father Guglielmo should also be commended. As so often at Holland Park, this was a fine company achievement.

Indeed, I think it was worth drawing attention to the achievement of the greater team at Holland Park. From Director of Opera James Clutton down (not to forget recently departed colleague Michael Volpe), or perhaps better, from a committed team of volunteers up, this is a friendly, welcoming, high-achieving company, crucial both to this country’s operatic ecology, past, present, and future, and also playing its part in building a more sustainable theatre in the broader, ecological sense. Since the pandemic, OHP has taken still greater care to work in partnership with local suppliers; a wonderful array of upscaled furniture provides audience seating; the auditorium has been constructed from reclaimed wood and recycled shipping containers. Art for art’s sake matters; let no one tell you otherwise. But art is never solely for art’s sake. To survive, it must assume and further social, environmental, and political responsibility. When everything goes right artistically, as it does here, that is even better, but human striving, artistic and social, matters greatly in itself and will only do so more as our world belatedly confronts a host of crises that never should have been permitted to reach this stage. Every theatre company, every orchestra, every artist, every partner organisation will have its/his/her/their own solutions, but they must work together too; that includes us as audiences. What better place to learn from hard work, effort, and example than here in Holland Park?

 

Il trittico, Opera Holland Park, 5 June 2015

Michele – Stephen Gadd

Giorgetta – Anne Sophie Duprels
Luigi – Jeff Gwaltney
Frugola – Sarah Pring
Tinca – Aled Hall
Talpa – Simon Wilding
Soprano Amante – Johane Ansell
Tenor Amante – James Edwards

Sister Angelica – Anne Sophie Duprels

Princess Zia – Rosalind Plowright
Abbess – Fiona Mackay
Monitress – Laura Woods
Mistress of the Novices – Kathryn Walker
Sister Genovieffa – Johane Ansell
Sister Osmina – Kathryn Hannah
Sister Dolcina – Rosanne Havel
Nursing Sister – Chloë Treharne
Alms Sisters – Anna Patalong, Sarah Minns
Novices – Naomi Kilby, Ellie Edmonds
Lay Sisters – Rebecca Hardwick, Chloe Hinton
Child – Matteo Elezi

Gianni Schicchi – Richard Burkhard

Zita – Sarah Spring
Lauretta – Anna Patalong
Rinuccio – James Edwards
Gherardo – Aled Hall
Nella – Elin Pritchard
Betto – Simon Wilding
Simone – William Robert Allenby
Marco – Ian Beadle
La Ciesca – Chloe Hinton
Spinelloccio – Henry Grant Kerswell
Gherardino – Barnaby Stewart
Buoso – Peter Benton

Martin Lloyd-Evans, Oliver Platt (directors)

Neil Irish (designs)
Richard Howell (lighting)

City of London Sinfonia

Stuart Stratford (conductor)

Time was when many felt compelled to ‘make allowances’ for ‘smaller’ companies. Now, more often than not, the contrary seems to be the case, instead apologising for their elder and/or larger siblings: ‘But of course, it is far more difficult for House X, given the conservatism of its moneyed audience,’ as if House X might not actually attract a different, more intellectually curious audience by programming more interesting works. At any rate, there is now no more need, if ever indeed there were, to ‘make allowances’, and it is difficult really to consider a company with such extensive programming as Opera Holland Park to be in any meaningful sense ‘smaller’. This new production – reusing its 2012 Gianni Schicchi – of Puccini’s complete Trittico may well be the best thing I have yet seen and heard at Holland Park.

Yet again, any reservations I might pre-emptively have held in abstracto concerning a small-ish orchestra (the outstanding City of London Sinfonia, strings 6:5:4:3:2) vanished within a few bars; the acoustic may sound unpromising in an unpromising performance, but in one such as this, with truly excellent conducting throughout from Stuart Stratford, there was no problem whatsoever. Dynamic contrasts and continuities could hardly have been more powerfully – and sensitively – communicated. Climaxes were shaped with unfailing conviction, matched, one felt, with as true an understanding as Puccini’s own of the dramatic ebb and flow. Indeed, the importance of rhythm, and its inextricable alliance to increasingly adventurous harmony, was projected in Il tabarro as almost a symphonic poem of the Seine itself – were that not woefully to underplay the role played by Stratford’s splendid cast. The post-verismo (if in fact we are post-) darkness of the score, lit by shards one might relate to Stravinsky, Schoenberg, or Debussy, but which one would be quite wrong to consider in any sense derivative, told of a Paris both distinct from and yet related to La bohème, Puccini’s self-quotation playful acknowledgement rather than necessity, so deeply imbued with style and meaning was the musical account.

Different colours, different sound-worlds presented  themselves in Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi, the tragic noose tightening inexorably in the former, all the more powerfully for its radiant feminity (from which Poulenc surely learned so much in Dialogues des Carmélites. I initially hardly felt like hearing the latter, immediately following the tragic denouement of Suor Angelica. Performance put me right, the revels now begun of a scherzo as full of zest and the comedic complexities of commedia dell’arte as the Petrushka score that more than once came to mind. Nothing was permitted to outstay its welcome, ‘O mio babbino caro’ for once a genuine moment of well-natured self-parody rather than a would-be reversion, in which members of the audience may sit back and ‘enjoy’. Indeed, Dante’s great comedy itself seemed to loom over the enterprise as a whole – just as, in very different circumstances, it had over Calixto Bieito’s brilliant Berlin double-bill of Schicchi and Bluebeard’s Castle earlier this year.

 

The casts were also as fine as I can recall from OHP, perhaps even finer still. Even given a certain amount of duplication, the number of singers involved is large, so as often put a strain upon one of those ‘larger’ houses. Here, no one disappointed, and the whole, as the well-worn cliché has it, was considerably greater than the sum of its parts; indeed, there was a real sense of company, such as one is more likely nowadays to find in relatively ‘smaller’ circumstances. Anne Sophie Duprels convinced equally in the conflicted roles of Giorgetta and Suor Angelica, her musical and dramatic focus and shaping every inch the equal of Stratford’s. Stephen Gadd and Jeff Gwaltney had one believe just as strongly in them and their plight in Il tabarro; it may not be a lengthy opera, but these felt like fully drawn characters, and the ‘smaller’ parts offered much of great interest too. So did those in the other two operas. Other singers to stand out – although it hardly seems fair to do anything but repeat the cast list – were a vehement, Rosalind Plowright as La Zia Principessa, nobler than the convent hierarchy, but possessed of similar, ruthless, yet perhaps ultimately more conflicted coldness. Family lines exert their own pressure, as we should shortly be reminded in Gianni Schicchi. Richard Burkhard’s protean Schicchi, Sarah Pring’s slightly but not too outlandish Zita, and Anna Patalong’s beautifully sung Lauretta headed a cast of true depth in that final instalment.

As night fell, the qualities of the three productions declared themselves in different ways; that change in light – and temperature – proved especially telling during the course of Suor Angelica. Neil Irish’s arched backdrop for Il tabarro, commenting yet expanding upon the ruins of Holland House, moved to the foreground for the laundry – inevitable thoughts concerning convent repression there – in Suor Angelica and the bedroom for Gianni Schicchi, laundered clothes serving dual purpose in the two latter operas. There was, however, no attempt to force the three operas closer together than that; they told their own stories, and we made connections as we would. Martin Lloyd Evans (Il tabarro and original director of Gianni Schicchi) and Oliver Platt (Suor Angelica and revival director of Schicchi) respected the works, which in turn seemed to respect them for it. Movement and designs were in keeping with the dictates of the action, scenic and musical alike, keenly observed without drawing undue attention. The tragedy and comedy of human existence were the focus, from pit and stage alike.

Madama Butterfly, Opera Holland Park, 12 June 2013

Holland Park

Butterfly – Anne Sophie Duprels

Pinkerton – Joseph Wolverton
Suzuki – Patricia Orr
Sharpless – David Stephenson
Goro – Robert Burt
Kate Pinkerton – Chloe Hinton
Bonze – Barnaby Rea
Prince Yamadori – John Lofthouse
The Imperial Commissioner – Alistair Sutherland
Butterfly’s Mother – Lindsay Bramley
The Aunt – Loretta Hopkins
The Cousin – Maud Millar
Yakuside – Nathan Morrison
Sorrow – Ben Bristow

Paul Higgins (director)

Neil Irish (designs)
Richard Howell (lighting)
Namiko Gahier-Ogawa (movement)

Opera Holland Park Chorus (chorus master: Holly Mathieson)
City of London Sinfonia
Manlio Benzi (conductor)


There is a sense in which it all began in London, Puccini having been seized in 1900 with the idea of an opera on this subject after watching David Belasco’s play here. London, in the guise of Opera Holland Park, certainly repaid the favour on this occasion. Not only, vile weather notwithstanding, did it aid my already rapid thawing towards Puccini; it offered a production and performance which, considered as a whole, were probably the finest I have yet seen at Holland Park.

 

It was certainly a relief to be spared the vulgarity of a Zeffirelli-like production. Paul Higgins’s staging and Neil Irish’s designs were not abstract, but they were (at least by some standards) relatively spare, offering a space in which the action may unfold rather than overwhelming it. The screens at the back of the stage both facilitate comings and goings and offer a welcome impression of Japanese or at least Orientalist stylisation; likewise the costumes are ‘faithful’ to time and place, without becoming an end in themselves. The American flag is as noticeable on stage as it is in Puccini’s score, perhaps a little less, but the effect in both is as much exotic as straightforwardly anti-imperialist. I cannot help but wish that Puccini had been a little more restrained in his use both of the ghastly Star-Spangled Banner and those too-obvious pentatonicisms, but at least he, like the staging, is relatively even-handed. (I suppose we should remind ourselves that what has become wearily commonplace for us was still very much new musical territory not so long after the celebrated Paris exhibitions.) Higgins also reminds us and holds in our mind that Cio-Cio-San is a dancer, Namiko Gahier-Ogawa’s movement working well in context. Nothing peripheral, however, is permitted to obscure the central tragedy: a signal achievement from which many directors could learn.

 

That also depends, of course, on a convincing assumption of the title role. Anne Sophie Duprels offered something rather more than merely convincing; she inhabited the role completely, offering a rounded portrayal in dramatic and vocal terms alike. Not a single false note, in any sense, was struck, and one sympathised to a degree beyond the expectations engendered by what can often seem a silly role. Butterfly’s delusion, then, convinced at least as much as her attraction. There was strength without steel, nobility without hauteur. Joseph Wolverton’s Pinkerton occasionally sounded a little too Italianate in the pejorative sense, and proved somewhat lacking in stage presence; still, with the American flag on his side, perhaps he did not need them.  Chloe Hinton offered hints of something far more in the role of his wife, but given the nature of that role, they could be little more than that. Patricia Orr, however, impressed greatly as a wise Suzuki, beautiful and graceful of voice and movement. David Stephenson’s Sharpless likewise made much, though never too much, of words and music. The suitors' and other smaller roles were all well taken.

 

The chorus sang and acted creditably throughout, clearly well trained. I was surprised by how little I missed the sound of a larger orchestra, the losses proving largely cosmetic rather than fundamental. Indeed, one heard in the City of London Sinfonia’s performance (strings 8.6.4.4.2) a great deal more of the inner workings – more than once I found myself recalling aspects of Die Meistersinger – than one might in a larger-scaled, conventional account. (That is not to claim that I think chamber orchestras should become the norm, but simply to note that, given a high enough level of performance, virtue can arise from necessity.) Manlio Benzi shrewdly marshalled his forces, imparting dramatic tension throughout and steering as clear as might reasonably have been expected from sentimentality.