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Opera

ENO’s The Girl of the Golden West is irresistibly seductive

Plus: ignore Rossini's primary-school simplification of Exodus, Pountney's Mose in Egitto for WNO is astonishing

11 October 2014

9:00 AM

11 October 2014

9:00 AM

The Girl of the Golden West

English National Opera, in rep until1 November

Mosè in Egitto

Welsh National Opera, on tour until 28 November

Puccini’s La fanciulla del West is, one suspects, one of those works that modern audiences struggle to keep a straight face through. The hero, for a start, decides to call himself Dick Johnson. The piece’s Wild West trappings, long since staled into Hollywood cliché, still seem a strange fit for the operatic stage (it was performed here as The Girl of the Golden West, with Kelley Rourke’s translation delivered in a variety of American accents).

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