Buy one and get (a good) one free

The long-established and well-respected Chelsea Opera Company programmed a concert version of two nineteenth-century Italian works: the seldom performed Le Villi by Giacomo Puccini and a permanent item in the international repertoire, Cavalleria Rusticana by Pietro Mascagni. The combination of these two operas seems to me an excellent opportunity to attract an audience with the later whilst introducing us to a rare Puccini piece which, due to its lack of consistent dramatic action but thanks to its excellent music, works better in an unstaged performance.

In Le villi, the soprano Camilla Roberts sang the role of Anna, the abandoned woman whose premonitory first aria suggests already that her sincere feelings will be the source of undeserved pain. Roberts’ uniform timbre is as luminous in the high notes as it is lush in the low ones. She…