Opera Holland Park opened their season with Puccini’s Manon. OHP has come a long way in the last 25 years.
The orchestra and chorus are much better, the sets more ambitious and some excellent singers are cast in the leading roles. Manon is Elizabeth Llewellyn who has been singing at Holland Park since 2011. She has a lovely voice and can act too. Though the standards at OHP have improved markedly it would be surprising if she considered it the pinnacle of her career so she must be pleased to have a couple of prestigious roles in her diary: the title role in Luisa Miller at ENO and Bess in Porgy and Bess at the Met in New York. It was a glorious evening where Puccini’s ravishing composition was allowed to sizzle.
Unfortunately when an opera company matures it is not all sunny uplands. Wouldn’t it be marvellous to have an international director, especially if we could get a woman? No, it jolly well wouldn’t, nevertheless Carolina Sofulak makes her OHP debut. She is Polish with considerable experience as an assistant director and now wants to make her mark in control. She sets Act I at a party which suggests 1960s swinging London and La Dolce Vita. This is fine; Manon and Geronte arrive in a taxi. Act II in Manon’s dressing room in Geronte’s home works too, although it has one of the most maddening scenes in opera. Manon only gets arrested because she takes too long packing her jewels. Lescaut and Des Grieux tell her to hurry up and I felt like adding my voice.
After the interval Carolina Sofulak’s interpretation unravels. Manon is with six other women, all wearing gold lamé sheath dresses. Are they being sent into white slavery in South America or are they working in a brothel? In the last Act she is in the same dress and there is no rationale for her imminent demise. It is an unsatisfactory interpretation and one best watched with eyes closed.