Page 216 - Guildhall Coverage Book 2020-21

(unsurprisingly) of a wife and her two husbands. Rita bemoans her lot and how her first one,
Gasparo, was apparently drowned at sea and – assuming he was dead – she got remarried to
Beppe. Then her house burned down and so did the village which means Gasparo who
survived now believes Rita to be dead. Having made a new life for himself in Canada he
returns for her death certificate so she can remarry. The rather dubious theme of Rita is ‘treat
’em mean and keep ’em keen’: Gasparo used to beat Rita to tame her (and we see how she
still has the bruises) and now Rita takes it out on the hapless Beppe. When Gasparo comes
back to the ‘Da Rita’ hotel, he teaches Beppe to stand up for himself and strike back.
Unhappily marital – or any – violence against women (or men) is no laughing matter in the
twenty-first century, and disturbingly when a beating is mentioned it is mimicked by what we
hear from the orchestra.

Perhaps Rita was not staged while Donizetti was alive because he seemed to have reused so
much of the music from his earlier L’elisir d’amore and Rita and Beppe are direct
descendants of Adina and Nemorino. Also, the opera sags during a buffo duet for Beppe and
Gasparo when they compete for Rita and it makes the opera seem much longer than 50
minutes and this could have been trimmed. This undermines the opera even though Dominic
Wheeler conducted an outstanding account of the score, inspiring his young musicians to give
their all. As in everything we heard, balance of the instruments and – Rita’s meanderings
notwithstanding – tempi were well handled, with the orchestral accompaniment perfectly
attuned to all three singers.

Rita – Thando Mjandana (Beppe), Chuma Sijeqa (Gasparo), Laura Lolita Perešivana (Rita)

Near the end soprano Laura Lolita Perešivana sounded a little overparted but otherwise was a
vivacious – though also sometimes over-excitable – Rita. As Beppe Thando Mjandana’s
tenor voice was projected with ease and had a natural bel canto charm. Equally good was
Chuma Sijeqa’s performance as a charismatic Gasparo. Sijeqa is a towering presence with a
deep and rich (bass-?)baritone voice and it will be interesting to see what the future holds for
him.
As an exclamation mark to Stephen Medcalf’s overarching concept of beds and dreams, Rita
who had awoken at the start beside Beppe awakes at the end as if from a nightmare next to
Gasparo!

Jim Pritchard