Arts:Blog

Opera Review: The Merry Widow ***

Anna Burnside reviews ‘a frothy delight’.

It’s mafia boss Don Zeta’s birthday and New York’s wise guys and their dolls are gathered to celebrate. All the talk is of Hanna Glawari, whose Sicilian mobster husband has just died and left her all his ill-gotten gains.

Don Zeta is adamant that this mafia cash must stay within the family and orders his consigliere, Danilo, to get wooing. What the boss does not know is that they were an item before she married.

Lehar’s cheery operetta has been through various incarnations since beginning as a comic play in 1860s Paris. This new version, with an occasionally saucy English translation, relocates it seamlessly to 1950s Manhattan.

The theme of women as property - there’s a laborious infidelity subplot - sits perfectly in the man’s world of organised crime.

Operetta allows for more levity than its more serious cousin, and there are guns, a comedy cement mixer, cartoonishly chewy accents and rhymes that include “keep it in your pants” with “firing blanks”.

It also looks gorgeous, with the women in jewel colours and flirty full skirts.

So far, so enjoyable. Where it falls down is in the lack of chemistry between Danilo and Hanna. They sound fine together but he does not convince as the ladykilling mobster, forgetting his love in the fleshpots of the Big Apple.

That wormhole aside, this is a frothy delight for the eyes as well as the ears.

The Merry Widow performs at the Theatre Royal in Glasgow, the Festival Theatre in Edinburgh, Eden Court in Inverness and His Majesty’s Theatre in Aberdeen. For performance details and dates, go to Scottish Opera’s website.

Photo by Mihaela Bodlovic.