Scottish Opera's New York Mafia take on The Merry Widow

There are certain operas you mess with at your peril. They tend to be the untouchable old favourites, and few come more sacred than those breezy 19th/early 20th century operettas adored for their fun, frivolity, flouncy ballroom dresses and fetching ditties. So, is Sheffield-born stage director John Savournin playing with fire by “re-envisioning” Franz Lehár’s exotic 1905 European high society farce The Merry Widow as a Mafia affair set in 1950s New York?

Scottish Opera audiences are about to discover for themselves when this audacious new co-production with D’Oyly Carte Opera and Opera Holland Park – performed in a promisingly edgy English translation by Savournin and his co-writer and long-time collaborator David Eaton – launches at the end of April. “The Mafia high life and its grim underworld have given us a really playful hook to re-explore the comedic elements,” he says.

“That’s a very rich world to parody,” he adds. “The comparison, the fidelity if you like, with Lehár’s world [in which the subversive pursuit of money gets dangerously entangled with matters of the heart] is actually quite close. Also, the character stakes are raised because this Merry Widow is not just about avoiding scandal; it’s about that scandal, if discovered, becoming a matter of life or death.” Thus the scheming Baron Zeta becomes Don Zeta, around whom a cast straight out of The Godfather are subject to offers they presumably can’t refuse.

Paula Sides with director John Savournin in rehearsals for The Merry Widow | Julie Howden

Whatever greets us over the coming weeks, be assured of an immersive night at the theatre. “Opera is fundamentally that,” insists Savournin, whose parents’ obsession with the amateur operetta circuit led to his own childhood decision to pursue a singer/director life in what he more generically terms musical theatre. “At home with friends we put on semi-staged concerts and wrote terrible music,” he recalls. As an 11-year-old he sang the role of the Judge in Gilbert & Sullivan’s Trial by Jury in nearby Buxton.

While training as an opera singer at Trinity College London he “had a hankering” to stage Sullivan’s Cox and Box. ”That’s where I met [répétiteur/music director] David Eaton, and we spoke about forming our own company – Charles Court Opera was born”. Twenty years on, it continues to thrive on a mixed diet of G&S, newly commissioned chamber opera and lashings of education and outreach activity. Among its seasonal “Boutique Pantos” was last Christmas’s unlikely hit comedy, Napoleon: Un Petit Pantomime. Savournin previously directed a Scottish Opera Highlights Tour, and sang in its spectacular 2022 production of Golijov’s flamenco opera Ainadamar.

William Morgan (Camille de Rosillon) and the cast of The Merry Widow in rehearsals | Julie Howden

He’s back in Scotland, simultaneously directing the company’s Trial by Jury, which opens in May as a season-ending double bill with Emma Jenkins’ and Toby Hession’s newly composed A Matter of Misconduct, altogether forming a summer operetta triptych alongside a Merry Widow he hopes will cut it with everyone from serious opera buffs to the curious uninitiated. “It’s the perfect opera for that, a marvellous balance between comedy and pathos, the full package.”

How far, though, was Savournin prepared to go with his rewrite of the spoken dialogue and Eaton’s reworking of the sung lyrics? “It’s important to remember you’re doing a version of The Merry Widow and not a totally new play,” he explains. “I’ve been careful ensuring the original beat of the story is looked after, that we still take the love story seriously and not disrespect the piece in any way. We’re both big believers that you keep a firm eye on the original if you’re going to create something new.”

And yes, liberties were taken. “In shifting this to the Mob world the language has to feel it is part of that. Changing how the spoken text sounds gives us that ability to access it better.” Yet, he adds, it remains firmly in the spirit of the genre, linking the late operetta style of Lehár with the MGM musicals heyday of the 1930s and ‘40s.

“Opera was always a stepping stone towards what musical theatre is now. Theatrically they are fundamentally one and the same. Lehár and G&S play well today because the stories are relatable, the music memorable: that’s a big part of operetta’s survival technique.” Even when the Mob muscle in...

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Scottish Opera’s The Merry Widow is at the Theatre Royal, Glasgow, from 30 April until 17 May; Eden Court Inverness on 22 and 24 May; Edinburgh Festival Theatre from 29 May until 7 June; His Majesty’s Theatre Aberdeen on 12 and 14 June; then at Opera Holland Park from 19-28 June. Full details at www.scottishopera.org.uk This feature was produced in association with Scottish Opera