Did you know that they used to make the Fiat 126 in the Eastern bloc? They did, apparently. There was a plant at Bielsko-Biala, and the car was widely driven throughout Poland in the 1970s, when you only had to wait a couple of years to buy one. It became an emblem of personal freedom, and Poles even gave it a nickname: Maluch, or ‘little one’.
That’s the principal insight that I gleaned from director Karolina Sofulak’s decision to set Cavalleria rusticana in communist Poland. She explains her thinking in the programme book: essentially, 19th-century Sicily was Catholic and repressive, and 1970s Poland was Catholic and repressive, so why not? Cue the latest one-size-fits-all operatic design cliché — fastidiously rendered depictions of 1970s squalor. In recent seasons I’ve seen the same basic combination of nylon, stained walls and greasy hair applied to Bellini, Humperdinck and Stephen Sondheim. Charles Edwards’s sets and Gabrielle Dalton’s costumes are in the best tradition of the genre, even down to the eyestrain-inducing lighting, which at times made it impossible to see anyone’s face properly.
On the other hand, Alfio’s little red Fiat stole the show every time it trundled into Mamma Lucia’s sausage shop (this is one of those stagings where religious processions take place in someone’s living room). It might seem harsh to say that the car upstaged both the male leads, but neither Phillip Rhodes’s blustery Alfio nor Jonathan Stoughton’s pale-voiced but lyrical Turiddù gave you much to root for. Characters and relationships were barely sketched in. The cast stalked portentously about the stage, pressing themselves against walls, and Santuzza (Giselle Allen) performed a creepy mock-crucifixion on Turiddù during the Easter Hymn.
Allen was unquestionably the star of the night, with a faintly maniacal demeanour of clenched purity and a voice that was by turns searing and tremulous — though Rosalind Plowright brought a brooding dignity to Lucia, even while perched impassively at the side of the action dressed as Dot Cotton.
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