James Inverne’s new play at Park 200 uses its title also as its first line – delivered by Puccini’s exasperated and jealous rival Leoncavallo – and thereby states its main theme. How much of the success of genius is bound up in talent and creativity, and how much in wily skullduggery? Or does it usually depend on an unsettling combination of the two?
What we have here is a dramatisation of the seething state of opera in Italy as the era of Verdi fades. Pictures of Verdi and La Scala may preside still over the set, but the baton has passed to Puccini and Leoncavallo, both with recent hits in a verismo vein – Manon Lescaut and Pagliacci. But will they be one-hit wonders? Which one will prevail in a successful follow-up work? Leoncavallo’s anguish at the start reflects the fact that Puccini and he are both working on a La Bohème. Is this plagiarism or chance? Which of them will get to the finishing line first? And which version will ultimately prevail with the public?
Much of the action is devoted to the race itself. While Puccini is the quicker worker and the favourite of Milan’s leading publisher, Ricordi, and Leoncavallo is full of self-doubt, it is not all one-sided. Indeed when we get to the first nights, it is Leoncavallo’s version that is better received by the audience and reviewers. Only in the long game of further productions does Puccini pull decisively ahead, not least through the intervention of Gustav Mahler in Vienna and other overseas patrons.
There is an obvious danger that this could all become a long, if fascinating, history lesson, and indeed there are a few moments in the first half that could be tightened where exposition simply becomes too static. But for the greater part, author and actors achieve a continuously effective dramatic whole, not least through humanising the main characters and adding in a series of suprising little cameos. Here a key role is played by Lisa-Anne Wood who starts off playing Berthe, Leoncavallo’s wife, and then switches at points to Puccini’s wife, Elvira. She also has a fine singing voice, which allowed us to sample music from both operas, historically plausible as Berthe was previously a professional singer herself. This helps bring the process of composition alive for us, and reveals how it was as much Puccini’s better dramatic instincts in making Mimi rather than Musetta the lead female role that enabled him to succeed.
Alasdair Buchan and Sebastien Torkia provide wonderfully detailed characterisations of the two composers. Buchan’s Leoncavallo is all bumbling insecurity, defiant paranoia and social clumsiness; whereas Torkia has all the debonair charm, poise and overweening self-confidence that we know Puccini possessed. But the writing and the playing balances things well – we get to appreciate that Leoncavallo really was a considerable composer, as anyone who has attended the recent revivals of his work at Opera Holland Park can attest. And we also get to see how Puccini’s unrelenting professional and personal ruthlessness created a huge wake of human waste and destruction throughout the length of his career. There is no doubt whose Bohème is the finer work, but the price paid is an indictment not just of Puccini the man but also the gladiatorial operatic system which the Italian public gloried in.
Surprisingly, perhaps, there is also a lot of humour in the evening, not least in the many brief impersonations the three actors indulge in to broaden the range of the cast. There is a particularly good take on Gustav Mahler, funny chiefly because it is so hammed up and over-the-top, and a constrast to the deadly earnest elsewhere. As usual at the Park, the sets and costumes and lighting are deftly integrated into the production, detailed and lavish where they need to be, and merely sketched in elsewhere.
The play is continuously thought-provoking and elegantly delivered, providing genuine entertainment while also offering plenty of insight too into the often mad and murky world of operatic production.
Writer: James Inverne
Director: Daniel Slater
Cast: Alasdair Buchan, Sebastien Torkia, Lisa-Anne Wood
Until 9 August 2025
2 hrs 10 mins with interval
Photo Credit: David Monteith-Hodge