It was a visit to New York in 1907 that inspired Puccini to consider writing an opera set in America. Puccini had already ventured far afield for his operatic settings with Madame Butterfly but it was a play by the same author, David Belasco, that pointed him in the direction of the American Wild West. The Girl of the Golden West is rarely performed these days. It has been called operatic pulp, a travel advert and a cowboy opera, while a lavishly expensive Covent Garden production some years ago was also off-putting. Audiences seem to flinch at the suggestion that a romantic opera could possibly be set in the Wild West with cowboys, gold miners and bandits. And admittedly it does take a bit of a leap of the imagination. Even so, Puccini considered it his finest opera.
Another problem for some is that Girl of the Golden West does not have many of those heart-wrenching arias that are so identifiable. You’ll rarely find them on any of those “best of opera” collections. Enrico Caruso may have starred in its premier at the New York Metropolitan in 1910 but even his presence seems not to have catapulted it into the normal repertoire.
However, putting all that aside, Opera North’s staging of the opera more than succeeds. It’s brilliantly designed with an engaging minimalist set that suggests rather than evokes the California background of the 1850s.
In Act One, the miners invade the local saloon where they dream of their families back home in Scotland, sell their gold, play a few games of poker, get a little drunk and fight while swooning over the matriarchal Minnie who runs the bar. But this nightly ritual is disturbed when the Wells Fargo agent arrives to tell them that a notorious bandit is in the area.
When a stranger walks into the saloon, he claims to be called Dick Johnson but is, in fact, the much-wanted Mexican bandit Ramerrez. Minnie immediately falls in love with him, much to the anger of local sheriff Jack Rance, who has his own eyes set on the feisty Minnie.
In a more traditional second act, Ramerrez and Minnie cement their romance in her love nest of a log cabin up in the mountains. Sherriff Rance nonetheless soon susses the situation, realising that Johnson is actually Ramerrez and, after a chase, the bandit is wounded and taken captive.
In the final act, Minnie comes to the rescue, displaying all her feminist credentials to show why she can lay claim to being the most radical female character in opera.
Rafael Rojas is a convincing Ramerrez, while Robert Hayward’s Rance is full of jealousy and nastiness, and Alwyn Mellor as Minnie exudes in the strength of her feminist role. Maybe one day audiences will grow to love what is an exciting and action-packed opera, expertly produced and performed here by Opera North. But little wonder it’s been called the first Spaghetti Western.