Politics, paternity and poison at Grange Park Opera

A popular former pirate, Simon Boccanegra became the first Doge of Genoa by public acclaim in 1339. This put an end to a period of strife between the Guelphs and Ghibelenes, which caused so much trouble that the people wanted a ruling Abbot, later called a Doge to stop the infighting. His name would now be lost, except to medieval historians, were it not for Verdi’s opera. Based on a play by the contemporary Spanish dramatist Antonio García Gutiérrez, Verdi’s first version, in 1857, suffered from a poor libretto, and the composer considered it a fiasco.

Twenty four years later his agent Ricordi, who hated to see good music go to waste, begged him to consider a revision, and he eventually consented, using a new libretto by Arigo Boito. This served as a testing ground for their later collaboration, which produced Verdi’s wonderful final two operas: Otello and Falstaff. The new 1881 version comprises a prologue followed by three acts that deal with what happens after 25 years, during which Boccanegra’s lover Maria Fiesco has died and their illegitimate daughter has vanished.

She turns out to be Amelia, adoptive daughter to a great fortune, but deeply in love with Gabriele Adorno, a sworn enemy of Boccanegra, who had planned to marry her off to his friend Paolo. Towards the end of Act I he realises she is his daughter, and she is then suddenly kidnapped. Adorno has killed the kidnapper, so nothing can be learned about who ordered the abduction, but he believes the Doge was behind it. In fact it was the scheming Paolo, who is stirring up a rebellion, and later poisons the Doge’s drinking water.

Towards the end of the opera the rebellion has been crushed, and Boccanegra tells his old enemy Fiesco that Amelia is his granddaughter. Boccanegra dies from the poison after declaring Adorno as his successor.

It’s a complex story, and Boito is to be thanked for rewriting the libretto to make it all a bit clearer. As a story this is as Shakespearean as you can get without actually being Shakespeare. Political intrigue, paternity and poison are the key ingredients.

Grange Park has revived David Pountney’s 1997 production for Welsh National Opera. This is a dark opera and the lighting by Tim Mitchell occasionally leaves the characters themselves in darkness. To emphasise the power of the patricians in the city assembly, four of them appear on stilts, their billowing robes held by attendants, dwarfing the Doge.

The recognition scene in late Act I came over superbly, and the whole ensemble packed a huge punch under the very capable baton of Gianluca Marciano, with superb singing from Simon Keenlyside as Boccanegra himself, and James Cresswell as Fiesco. Elin Pritchard made a delightful and strongly sung Amelia, with Georgian tenor Otar Jorjikia as her beloved Adorno. Only Jolyon Loy as the brutal and scheming Paolo seemed miscast and lacked vocal depth.

In their wonderful Theatre in the Woods, Grange Park Opera have the physical space and the operatic talent to plunge us into medieval Genoa, or at least Verdi’s imaginative recreation of it.

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