The many who love Louisa May Alcott’s 1868 American sisterhood novel will come with expectation and goodwill to Mark Adamo’s 1998 opera, here receiving a belated UK premiere after several outings in the US. Those feelings will carry them a long way in Ella Marchment’s production for Opera Holland Park, which always treats Alcott’s themes and characters with affectionate sensitivity and respect.
In the end, though, this is not enough to make Little Women into a successful opera. The root of the problem is partly that Alcott’s coming-of-age tale is not primarily theatrical, and Adamo’s setting struggles to overcome this narrative reality. Intelligently, he frames Little Women as a pared-down retrospective seen from Jo March’s adulthood, an approach which gives the piece dramatic structure but brings its own problems.
