If it wasn't written by Puccini, and a Puccini apparently still at the height of his creative powers at that, then no one would bother much with La Rondine. Composed during the early years of the first world war in response to a commission from Vienna for an operetta, it is musically and dramatically thin, despite the revisions that were made after the premiere in 1917. It is only that rarity value, and the performance of Janis Kelly in the main role, that make Opera North's revival of Francesca Zambello's 1994 staging worth catching.
The story has more than a whiff of the first half of Verdi's La Traviata about it - older soprano with a past, Magda, forsakes the glamorous social whirl of Paris to live on the Riviera with her younger tenor lover, Ruggero, only for everything to end in tears. But this bittersweet little tale just isn't convincing, you can't believe in any of the characters, not even Magda, who is much more of a Manon than a Violetta, and doesn't seem to inhabit any kind of reality. The real problem with the piece is that Puccini seems not to have believed in them either. The whole score contains just a couple of tunes that are memorable and those are endlessly recycled. The rest is generalised - vaguely sentimental, vaguely charming, vaguely nothing.
A conductor who really went for the music and gave it the energy and self-belief it so patently lacks might make La Rondine into a credible piece of theatre. Antonio Pappano does just that on his recording with Ghiorghiu and Alagna. But at Opera North, Dietfried Bernet is not cut out to be such a saviour and his plodding, inert performance does more than anything else to drag the evening down into dreariness.
Zambello's production, revived by Peter Relton, doesn't strike many sparks either - the black draped first act set (designs by Bruno Schwengl) seems particularly inapt - and it is left to the singers to bring what life they can to the proceedings. Kelly does that wonderfully - she gives Magda real stature and presence - and the rest of the cast led by Jorge Antonio Pita, Mary Hegarty and Wynne Evans provide solid support. But no one can pretend this is one of Opera North's better evenings.
Ends tonight.Box office 0113 222 6222. Then tours to Newcastle, Manchester, Nottingham and Hull
