Clik here to view.
Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool
Mendelssohn, it would seem, blew hot and cold about opera, a genre associated with his youth. He wrote five, completing the last and best-known, Die Hochzeit des Camacho, when he was 16. But he also lived in an era when operatic managements had fearsome control over content, and was forced to make changes to Camacho before its 1827 premiere. It rankled – for the rest of his life, one suspects.
Its revivals have been sporadic. The latest, a collaboration between the European Opera Centre and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, uses a new critical edition that represents Mendelssohn's final thoughts, though it doesn't solve its problems of narrative control. The source is an episode from Don Quixote, in which the Don and Sancho Panza become embroiled with the lovers Basilio and Quiteria, whose relationship is threatened when the latter's father insists she marry the rich, if insufferable, Camacho. The plot mechanics are intrusive, and the piece seems busy but undercharacterised. But the music has great charm, with Mozart's influence strongly apparent.
Conducted by Vasily Petrenko and directed by Ignacio Garcia, it's finely done, though it could do with more detailed sets. Garcia, playing it reasonably straight and in period, reminds us that this is a 16-year-old's work by reimagining the Don (Peter Paul, very touching) as a real Romantic dreamer. Petrenko has fun with it and the cast is excellent, though Mendelssohn's implacable tenor writing pushes Jérôme Billy's Basilio to his limits. Katharina Persicke is radiant as Quiteria, though it's Alexander Jankowitsch's glorious Sancho Panza who steals the show.
