National Opera House,Wexford
Distinguished singing and colourful staging combine to make wonderful cases for these operatic rarities by Mascagni and Hérold Wexford’s exhumation of operatic rarities continues with Mascagni’s Guglielmo Ratcliff, based on a play by Heine and premiered in 1895, or five years after the composer instigated the realist movement in Italian opera with his No 1 hit Cavalleria Rusticana. Ratcliff moves off in an entirely different direction: set in northern Scotland around 1820,the drama carries strong gothic overtones, and feels more like a subject that might have appealed to Donizetti.
Rejected lover Ratcliff has already murdered two of his three rivals before curtain up, and goes on to execute both Maria – unfortunate thing of his unwanted attentions – as well as her father,before eventually killing himself in the gory final scene.
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Source: theguardian.com