Anniversaries are a boon to the neglected but Giacomo Puccini, who died in a Brussels clinic on 29 November 1924 aged 65, is already kingpin of operatic Elysium. He can go no higher. His works head the opera performance league tables (yes, there is such a thing – see Operabase). At his death, as well as some $230m by today’s estimate, he left behind a mess of infidelities, illegitimacy and rumours of a butler alleged to have siphoned jewels and bunked off to Monte Carlo. All Puccini cared about was that his final opera, Turandot, would remain unfinished, which proved the case.
The Royal Opera House, without too much departure from the norm, has acknowledged his centenary by packing the schedule with Bohèmes, Toscas and Madama Butterflys between now and July. Nor should we complain. Box office success, given current climes, has never been more essential. These popular works also happen to be creations of genius. If you tire – is such a thing possible? – of the opening horseplay in La bohème, listen to the beady anarchy in the woodwind, or the way the harp suddenly sends the emotional temperature up to boiling point, thereby allowing Mimì, embroiderer of flowers, and Rodolfo, poet, to fall in love in a record-breaking matter of minutes.
For 14 performances of La bohème, in Richard Jones’s visionary Parisian arcade staging (2017), designed by Stewart Laing, the ROH has lined up two conductors, three casts and – pity him the logistics – one revival director, Simon Iorio. In the first of these, conducted lovingly but at times ponderously by Keri-Lynn Wilson, the Albanian tenor Saimir Pirgu, ardent and bright-toned as Rodolfo, and the Armenian soprano Ruzan Mantashyan, persuasive and warm as Mimì, were convincing lovers. An effective Donna Elvira in Glyndebourne’s Don Giovanni last summer, she was making her ROH debut. As the quarrelsome Musetta and Marcello, the Australian soprano Lauren Fagan and the Russian baritone Mikhail Timoshenko revelled in disputation, as well as attracting sympathy. The chorus of Christmas Eve merrymakers, adults and children alike, rose to the challenges of the riotous Act 2. Often, across the whole, ensemble was rickety, and some of the acting has yet to relax and fill out, but it will. You may be too hard-hearted to bite your lip from start to finish but some of us are not.
A Mendelssohn thread ran through the rest of the week. At Queen Elizabeth Hall, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by the Ukrainian Natalia Ponomarchuk, performed Family Ties: the Schumanns and the Mendelssohns. The focus was on Clara and Robert Schumann, husband and wife, and Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn, brother and sister: 19th-century contemporaries, colleagues, friends. It all looked good on paper but made an oddly peremptory evening. The Russian pianist Alexander Melnikov was soloist in Clara Schumann’s Piano Concerto, followed by the Introduction and Allegro for piano and orchestra by Robert Schumann.
Neither work is easy to navigate. Dramatic, close-textured and virtuosic, Clara’s, written in her early teens, felt precarious, its narrative insecure. Robert’s two-movement work sounded more than intentionally improvisatory. The other works came off better. Fanny Mendelssohn’s Overture in C major (1832), her only purely orchestral piece, bursts into flittering action after a slow introduction. In her brother’s Scottish Symphony, the LPO shifted up a collective gear, and found the customary zest and conviction lacking in the two Schumanns. Mendelssohn may have been steeped in Scottish mizzle – Holyrood, Walter Scott, “Ossian” – but his symphony might stand as a very personification of German early romanticism.
After Fanny’s untimely death, Mendelssohn wrote his sixth and final string quartet, in F minor, Op 80 (1847). He called it “Requiem for Fanny”. The Treske Quartet concluded their debut Conway Hall recital with the piece, mustering all the impassioned intensity needed. These young Manchester-based players use instruments made (by the workshop of WE Hill & Sons) from a single tree. Whether or not for that reason, their sound is meticulously blended, aided by the hall’s excellent acoustic. Each spoke a few words about one of the four works – informal, insightful, sharing their enthusiasm.
Having opened with another work from the canon, Haydn’s dazzling and radical Quartet in D, Op 20 No 4, they went further afield for their other choices: Stravinsky’s Three Pieces for String Quartet (1914, rev 1918), tiny, gleaming gems, and a work from the present: Carrot Revolution (2015), witty and percussively adventurous, by the Californian Gabriella Smith (b 1991). Conway Hall, built in 1929 and home of the Ethical Society, has a long tradition of playing music by women, from Ethel Smyth in her day onwards. The organisation’s Sunday concerts began originally in 1878 as the People’s Concert Society, formed to increase “the popularity of good music by means of cheap concerts”. £15 per ticket (£14 online) honours that promise (£7 for NHS staff and other concessions). Tomorrow night: Mark Padmore, tenor, and Roger Vignoles, piano, with actor-singer Hazel Holder. You can’t lose.
Star ratings (out of five)
La bohème ★★★★
Family Ties: The Schumanns and the Mendelssohns ★★★
Treske Quartet ★★★★
• La bohème is at the Royal Opera House, London, until 16 February
