Le Villi is not your usual Puccini. While Tosca, La Bohème, Turendot Madame Butterfly et al are amongst the most popular of all operas, Le Villi is little known and rarely performed. Not your usual Puccini because it deals with strange goings on in a magical forest inhabited by fairies, and rarely performed because it is only one act, barely an hour long. One-act operas – and indeed plays – are a problem (unless you lump three of them together as the composer did in Il trittico) as they don’t really constitute a full evening’s entertainment. Opera Zuid has solved this issue by commissioning a twenty minute prelude, but more of this later. It is also unusual in as much as there are extended ballet sequences.
Written when he was twenty-five, Le Villi was Puccini’s first, though ambitious, try at opera and one can’t help thinking that because of the forest setting and the mythology he was perhaps inspired by Giselle (sometimes known as Les Wilis) a ballet based on a story by Heinrich Heine, and even by Wagner – although the music, even this early in his career, is unmistakably Puccini. A version of Le Villi was performed at La Scala in Milan in January 1885 but was not published until three years later.
But what of this production by Opera Zuid? Well, I think it can be described and summed up in one word – spectacular. Although there are only three characters there is a huge choir and a small troupe of dancers, some of which also display amazing circus skills.
The set was made up entirely of gauze – numerous drapes and ten full-height tubes representing trees. Gauze is widely used in stage décor because of its remarkable properties – when lit from the front it is totally opaque enabling it to be projected on and used for a front-cloth (or in this case, trees), but when the light is behind the gauze it becomes almost totally transparent. This allowed for some amazing effects when the nymphs and fairies were inside the tubes and lit from above. These tubes were not static but were twisted and twirled to provide an amazing kaleidoscope of movement and colour, not least for the breath-taking aerial ballet sequences. Special mention must to go to Bretta Gerecke for the décor and lighting. Visually Le Villi was a feast, cleverly conceived and flawlessly executed – a case of gauze and effect.
But one has to remember this was essentially an opera . . . in the eternal story of love and loss Anna and Roberto celebrate their engagement in the mysterious forest shortly before he has to leave for the city. They pledge their love and he promises a swift return for their marriage. However, he fails to turn up on time and in the winter cold Anna dies, placing a curse on him. When he does finally arrive she appears to him as a spirit and condemns him to dance until death. Silvia Sequeira made a powerful and convincing Anna while Denzil Delaere sang beautifully as the doomed Roberto. Ivan Thirion made a Gandalf-like father. The twenty-five-strong Theaterkoor were much in evidence and the Philzuid Orkest under the baton of Karel Deseure, like the dancers, never put a foot wrong.
I was not so sure about the prelude by Karmit Fadael entitled Silenzio. It involved Ms Sequeira (as the spirit of Anna?) wandering through the trees reflecting on loss and loneliness. Sung in Italian and English with some barely audible spoken word I think it did little to add to the proceedings. I can understand why they did it in order to make up the time, but it was very low key, so much so that it set the wrong tone for what would be an exciting and exuberant performance.
But as I said, overall Opera Zuid’s Le Villi was a huge, ambitious and multi-faceted production which succeeded on all levels and which would have proved a perfectly satisfactory evening all by itself, even though it was relatively short. Michael Hasted at Amare in The Hague 10th June 2025
Photo by Joost Milde
You can see more pictures and read an interview with Bretta Gerecke and costume designer Marrit van der Burgt in the current issue of ArtsTalk Colour Supplement.
The tour of Le Villi continues until 19th June.
