O’Reilly Theatre, Wexford

★★★★

Guglielmo Ratcliff by Pietro Mascagni (1863-1945) is an opera that almost shouldn't work at all. Characters spend an inordinate amount of time recounting the past. The whole of the first act is essentially given over to back story, and even in Act IV there's another dose of narrative to bring clarity for us all – those on stage as well as in the audience.

The wonder of Fabio Ceresa's new Wexford Festival Opera production, presented almost entirely in white by designers Tiziano Santi (sets) and Giuseppe Palella (costumes), and carefully shaded by the lighting of Ian Sommerville, is that it all actually works so well.

The style is bleached, dream-like Gothick. The plot, taken by Mascagni from Heine's 1822 play William Ratcliff, deals with the destruction wrought on generations of two families by obsessive but doomed love.

Ceresa’s solution to the extended narratives is to make the past physically real in the present. The ghosts of the deceased, whose murderous romantic intrigues haunt their descendants, mingle on stage with the living, in the form of pairs of sinuously alert wolves and nobly strutting deer (the dancers Mattia Agatiello, Noemi Bresciani, Alexander McCabe and Riccardo Olivier).

Heine created Ratcliff after the experience of unrequited love, and the intensity of Mascagni's response to the dilemma of the wild Scotsman had the same spur. His music often broods and worries, can seem indulgently long-winded, and sometimes lurches almost implausibly into operatic cliché. And yet, as the flexible conducting of Francesco Cilluffo shows, it can all be moulded into a fascinating whole.

The vocal writing for Ratcliff is almost recklessly demanding, and tenor Angelo Villari has the heft and stamina to take it all heroically in his stride. Mascagni showed less interest in Maria, the subject of Ratcliff’s obsession, though soprano Mariangela Sicilia makes the most of the opportunities she is given.

The darkly eccentric Margherita of gutsy mezzo soprano Annunziata Vestri carries out the function of family historian with gripping intensity, and there are strong contributions, too, from the bass Gianluca Buratto’s MacGregor and baritone David Stout’s Douglas.

Mascagni began the work when he was just 18, and it had to wait for a hearing until after the great success of his Cavalleria rusticana. This Wexford production makes it easy to understand why he always professed to regard it more highly than the opera on which his reputation is now based. Runs October 25, 28, 31. Wexford Festival continues until November 1st. wexfordopera.com