Isabeau review – Anne Sophie Duprels soars as Mascagni's neglected heroine

Opera Holland Park, London
Exciting singing and Francesco Cilluffo’s terrific conducting power this rarely seen variation on the Lady Godiva legend

When a work languishes in obscurity for as long as Pietro Mascagni’s 1911 opera Isabeau has done, there is usually a good reason. In the case of Isabeau, several such explanations offer themselves, for Isabeau is emphatically not a lost masterpiece. The subject matter – a variation on the Lady Godiva legend – is creepy, the post-Wagnerian musical writing is overwrought and a bit one-paced, and the score lacks the moments of fresh genius that Mascagni found so successfully in Cavalleria Rusticana 20 years earlier.

Yet it is hard not to feel that Isabeau has been hard done by. It is, after all, an opera about a woman, Isabeau, who refuses an arranged marriage and is punished for it. It has two big and demanding roles. And, whatever his limitations, Mascagni pushes his own musical boundaries – as he often did in his post-Cav works – this time with a chromatic through-composed score in the German manner. The explosive discord that opens act two is proof of that on its own.

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