Preview - La Fanciulla del West at the King’s Head Theatre from February 3 - March 3
Published: 2 February, 2012
by SEBASTIAN TAYLOR
Puccini’s opera La Fanciulla del West is getting the OperaUpClose treatment at the King’s Head Theatre in Upper Street, opening tomorrow (Friday).
The work is widely regarded as Puccini’s Wild West opera after Madama Butterfly set in the Far East and La Bohème in Europe.
In Puccini’s opera, innkeeper Minnie gets the hots for gang-leader Dick Johnson in a big way.
She tries in vain to protect him from being discovered by sheriff Jack Rance but not before she and Dick sing of their love in passionate, surging Puccini music.
The OperaUpClose version is updated to a dilapidated internet café in Soho run by Minnie for Eastern European immigrants.
She falls for gang leader ‘Vik’ Johnson, playing a hand of poker to save his life.
Puccini’s cast of 18 characters is reduced to six in the OperaUpClose production, the orchestral music played by a viola and piano.
The company has led the field in small-scale opera productions since its award-winning staging of La Bohème at the Cock Tavern Theatre on Kilburn High Road in autumn 2009. It has put on seven operas at the King’s Head and two at Soho Theatre.
• La Fanciulla del West is at the King’s Head Theatre, Upper Street, Islington, from February 3 with 24 performances to March 3, 020 7226 4443, 7.15pm, from £16,