The cat’s cradle that is Palermo’s history is knottier still in Stefan Herheim’s production of Verdi’s The Sicilian Vespers at the Royal Opera House.
The ballet that was necessarily inserted into the opera’s Paris premiere in 1855 is exploded like Cornelia Parker’s shed into dance elements that wind through the acts, from opening barre class to grand finale. Threads of real history, performance history and pure theatre are intertwined, so that the audience’s brains need to do their jetés too.
In its second revival since its first staging in 2013, the production, under revival director Dan Dooner, feels less outlandish but still reluctant to tell a true story without intermittently turning it into a Parisian burlesque.
Joyce El-Khoury as Hélène
Lebanese-Canadian soprano Joyce El-Khoury sings Hélène, defiant duchess in search of revenge for the death of her brother at the hands of the French, who have taken Palermo. Even when saddled with carrying Frederic’s severed head, business that is both daft and distracting, El-Khoury can spin a high note out of thin air, although there is less heft in the voice than in the character’s heroism.
Her arch enemy, the French leader Guy de Montfort, who will be revealed as the father of her lover, Henri, is sung by Hawaiian baritone Quinn Kelsey, with a real feeling for the tyrant’s change of purpose as the opera proceeds: the pull of fatherhood outdoes his political ambitions, and leads to clemency.
That quality is not shared by Sicilian rebel Jean Procida. Italian bass-baritone Ildebrando d’Arcangelo sings this strangely unsympathetic role unlovably. Maybe it’s the flag-waving in Act 5. The high point of this long opera is not, in fact, the massacre of the French by the Sicilians from which it takes its name. That is left to the imagination as the curtain falls. It is the pleading of Montfort for recognition by his sworn enemy and son, Henri.
Quinn Kelsey as Montfort and Valentyn Dytiuk as Henri
Such pivotal scenes of heightened emotions were fashionable in opera and indeed across all art forms in the sentimental mid-19th century. A dramatic, duty-versus-love turning point was what Verdi wanted from the libretto by Eugene Scribe and Charles Deveyrier, which was shunted over from Donizetti’s abandoned Le Duc d’Albe. (It was later re-exported to Donizetti for his Italian language second attempt at the Sicilian melodrama, Il Duca d’Alba.) And when Ukrainian tenor Valentyn Dytiuk’s Henri initially repels Montfort, Kelsey’s stricken father reveals the bully’s hidden depths.
The crazed cruelty of occupation is diluted by recourse to scenes of undisguised theatre, but an augmented Royal Opera Chorus suggests the mass of oppressed people. And there is edgy vigour in the conducting of Speranza Scappucci, taking up her new role as principal guest conductor. Scappucci first appeared at the Royal Opera House in 2022, and was signed up almost at once. With her Italian background and breadth of experience at opera houses worldwide, she is good news for Verdi, for audiences and for the Orchestra of the Royal Opera, here crackling with dramatic tension.
Ildebrando d’Arcangelo as Procida
When the composer made his career-enhancing move from his native land to Paris, he knew he had to please opera-goers there with something on a massive scale. This many-layered production reflects that heady time in its set design by Philipp Fűrhofer and costumes by Gesine Völlm. André de Jong’s choreography and the spirited dancers cannot help but bring a joy that sits oddly with the almost unrelentingly fraught story.
The Sicilian Vespers is sung in Italian with English surtitles. It runs until 6 October, and is a co-production with the Royal Danish Opera, Copenhagen.