The Merry Widow: Bada bing! Scottish Opera serves up a beautiful production with a dash of The Sopranos

Telegraph

01-05-2025

In Austro-Hungarian composer Franz Lehár's three-act operetta The Merry Widow, Baron Mirko Zeta of the fictional, cash-strapped Balkan state of Pontevedro attempts to manufacture a marriage between his right-hand man Danilo Danilovitch and the titular rich, Pontevedrian widow Hanna Glawari. His purpose is to keep Mrs Glawari's millions in Pontevedro.
In this new co-production by Scottish Opera, D'Oyly Carte Opera and Opera Holland Park, the action is relocated to the world of the Italian-American mafia in mid-20th-century New York. The baron is reimagined as mafia boss Don Zeta, who is plotting to get his hands on the extremely valuable lemon plantation of Tennessee-born Hanna Glawari, the recently widowed wife of a boss in the Sicilian Cosa Nostra.
This new, English-language adaptation by John Savournin (book) and David Eaton (lyrics) begins in Don Zeta's palatial Manhattan apartment. There we find the mafia boss in good spirits. It's his 50th birthday party, many of his enemies appear to be 'sleeping with the fishes', while others have woken up to find a severed horse's head in their bed. These macabre mafia clichés are, however, conveyed with a light-hearted humour.
Savournin and Eaton have created a clever and delightfully silly cross between a commedia dell'arte farce and an episode of The Sopranos. Most of the Don's men are trigger-happy numbskulls, and Camille de Rosillon (the operetta's amorous Frenchman) is recast as a Gallic singer whose American concerts and record contracts owe a very definite debt to his mafia connections.
This inspired daftness is conveyed fabulously by a universally impressive cast. The ever excellent bass-baritone Henry Waddington is disarmingly jovial in the role of the greedy and ruthless Don Zeta. Remarkably – given the unarguable nastiness of the protagonists – the adaptation succeeds in achieving the operetta's ultimate ascent into romantic comedy. Soprano Paula Sides (who is, in fact, from Tennessee) plays Glawari with a winning combination of sassiness and glamour. Her gorgeous singing, in Act II, of the lovely aria Vilja creates a moment of improbable beauty in the midst of the prevailing buffoonery. Opposite her, Danilo – who is recast as the Don's consigliere, and sung by the fine baritone Alex Otterburn – makes for an unlikely yet convincing romantic hero.
There is more spoken dialogue in the piece (especially in Act I) than you would usually expect in an opera. However, Lehár's bright, colourful score makes its presence felt increasingly, and the Scottish Opera's orchestra delivers it with the required combination of lightness and heft.
Designer takis delivers three very distinct and brilliant sets (in Don Zeta's apartment, Glawari's Sicilian villa and Manhattan nightclub Maxim's). There is no interval between Acts II and III. What we get instead is a set change that is breathtakingly well executed.
This bold adaptation makes for a delightful evening's opera. It is one that is bound to impress as it tours around Scotland before a summer run at Opera Holland Park in London.