An enormous rococo sofa dominates the stage. Great artworks jostle for space on the walls – Picasso, Velázquez, a handful of impressionists, and a banner reads “Happy birthday boss”. Guests pour in from a pinging elevator: a maelstrom of big skirts in Disney princess colours, high-rise hair, three-piece suits and pork pie hats. Out of the window: skyscrapers.
In singer turned director John Savournin’s latest production for Opera Holland Park – a collaboration with Scottish Opera and D’Oyly Carte Opera – Franz Lehár’s hit operetta The Merry Widow switches fictional Pontevedro and Le Gai Paris for New York’s mafia underworld and its Sicilian homeland. The plot’s patriarch becomes a pinstripe Manhattan godfather, title character Hanna Glawari the widow of a Sicilian lemon-tree racketeer.
