While Opera Holland Park offers its fair share of box-office bankers, it also enjoys disinterring neglected, if not “masterpieces”, then let’s say “curiosities”. This double bill presents two for the price of one. Both Delius’s Margot la Rouge and Puccini’s Le Villi were written for a competition for short operas, Margot in 1902, Le Villi in 1883. Neither won. Delius’s opera had to wait nearly 80 years for its premiere. Puccini’s, his first opera, was disqualified from the competition but was warmly received when it was staged in 1884.
Putting them together works well. Martin Lloyd Evans’s production has one set, designed by takis: a wooden shack on a revolving stage that allows two views of the structure. In Margot la Rouge, they show the interior and exterior of a shabby drinking den where sex workers – Margot among them – take a break from their labour. They are joined by two soldiers, one of whom, Thibault, recognises Margot as an old flame. He gets into an argument with her current lover, who kills him before being killed in turn by a vengeful Margot.
