Hold on to your horses! The WA Opera has brought to life Puccini’s La Fancuilla del West as a spaghetti western by way of John Ford’s searingly stark black and white palette, the opening an astounding vision of forced perspective and cinemascope projection (complete with film spliced static and the requisite smoke); and the titles literally coming towards you as if you were at the movies.
Impressed by the New World, Puccini wrote this rather specific opera to be set in the Californian Gold rush era, seeking to modernise his technique; however the resulting score has such strong orchestrations that it has been debated that singers are almost put to the test in a competition to see whether they can out volume the symphony.
The music is uncompromisingly and unabashedly melodramatic, telling a tale of a rough and ready mining camp, populated by men with gold fever in their veins but the wistful hearts of a clan of Lost Boys far from the comforts of home.
The intrinsically simple tale of boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy wins girl back is made complex by the girl being a gun-toting den mother/ sister/ teacher/ friend to this frontier mining camp; the hero being two faced and with conflicting agendas; and a black hat sheriff whose obsession for the titular heroine turns to menace when she rejects him.
The strikingly innovative set design by Michael Scott-Mitchell was post modern clever, the scored lines of an endless bar accentuated in Act 1 (taking place in the expansive Polka Saloon); then transformed into intimacy in Act 2 as we (and the bandit hero) ventured into the simple cabin of tough but naive Minnie; we are then transported to the unforgiving isolation of the woods in Act 3, about to bear witness to a lynching... All scenes were lit with dazzling chiaroscurophic effect by Philip Lethlean.
The costumes by designer Zoë Atkinson seemed to take their inspiration from John Ford’s films also – black, white and grey were outfitted to the cast; lending a pre-Oz, still-in-Kansas vision to the majority of the male chorus and soloists. It left the audience alert to colour...the bright red feather in minstrel Jack Wallace’s (Sitiveni Talei) hat, was a herald to the Technicolour vision of Minnie (Anke Höppner) when she appeared - aglow in a halo of honeyed curls, her dress like sunlight with bright yellows and oranges - a beacon of femininity in the midst of male gunmetal ambition.
However, the most startling and unexpected aspect of this production was the added insight and gasp-worthy glory brought about by video designer Scott Otto Anderson and video producer Mic Gruchy, whose projected art installations throughout the opera gave the piece such an excitement and contemporary feel that you couldn’t ignore that this production as a whole would have suffered for their lack.
From the family portraits of loved ones left at home, to the almost three-dimensional growing red rose of passion which lovers Minnie and Dick Johnson (Dario Volonté) seem to almost fall into, this is the first time I have seen projections used to such a degree in what is traditionally a theatrical piece – bravo to the WA Opera for taking a chance on presenting this imaginative concept!
Overall, the opera was spectacular, but time heavy, not overblown but possibly a little overdrawn. But for once Puccini gave us a happy ending, and Minnie manages to save her man by appealing to the hearts of the miners that she has loved and cared for in their isolating ambition to cultivate wealth. The lovers literally walk off into the sunset, their silhouettes a cinematic coda.
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