Merseyside has always been rather proud of Emilia di Liverpool, the opera Donizetti wrote about the city in 1824. It received a mixed reception at its Naples premiere the same year, and the score languished in comparative obscurity until it was revived in Liverpool in 1957 with the young Joan Sutherland in the title role. This superb new production by the European Opera Centre... based at Liverpool Hope University... ran through New Year's week, forming a prelude to Friday's official opening celebrations of the city as European Capital of Culture.
It used to be fashionable for critics to dismiss the opera, without ever having heard it, as an eccentric expression of 19th-century Italy's Romantic fascination with Britain. In fact, it is not so much a Romantic work as an acerbic comedy of manners that examines themes of reconciliation after emotional trauma and division.
Emilia lives in seclusion after her elopement with, and abandonment by, Federico - events that so appalled Emilia's mother that the shock led to her death. Fate, meanwhile, in the form of an almost Shakespearean tempest, contrives to deliver to her door not only the seemingly unrepentant Federico, but Emilia's vengeful father Claudio and the cynical Don Romualdo, a Neapolitan nobleman whom Emilia's mother always hoped she would marry.
Donizetti's score darts and dives around the resulting emotional tangle, before reaching an ambivalent ending. Romualdo eventually claims that the only resolution to "all this bad business is a makeshift marriage" between Emilia and Federico. We are left to decide for ourselves whether it will work.
Staged in the round, in the beautiful St George's Hall, Ignacio Garcia's production updates the piece to the mid-19th century, cannily placing it in a Dickensian world where moral propriety, sentimental passion and uneasy humour are brought into continuous juxtaposition. The sight of Emilia's mother's grave, on stage throughout, queasily reminds us that Emilia herself may never quite escape her past.
Several casts have performed the opera throughout its run. Last Saturday, Vesselina Genchova Vassileva was the tremendous Emilia, opposite Philippe Talbot's stylish, easy Federico and Marc Canturri's fanatical Claudio. All three have major careers ahead of them if this is anything to go by. Giovanni Pacor conducted with great elan and panache. A terrific work, beautifully performed.
