Powerful stuff: Opera North concludes its concert staging of Verdi's Simon Boccanegra with an evening filling the Royal Festival Hall with drama

Verdi: Simon Boccanegra - Roland Wood, Antony Hermus, Vazgen Gazaryan, Opera North (Photo: James Glossop)

Verdi: Simon Boccanegra; Roland Wood, Sara Cortolezzis, Andrés Presno, Vazgen Gazaryan, Mandla Mndebele, Richard Mosley-Evans, director: PJ Harris, conductor: Anthony Hermus: Opera North at Royal Festival Hall
Reviewed 25 May 2025

A finely balanced cast create a very satisfying and compelling performance of one of Verdi's darkest yet most fascinating dramas, with Opera North's chorus and orchestra on thrilling form.

Verdi's Simon Boccanegra is a strange opera. Dark and foreboding, it features four male characters none of whom are entirely admirable, a title role without a conventional aria and a heroine who veers perilously close to the Victorian Virgin. Verdi regarded his unsuccessful first version of the opera (from 1857) as too gloomy and 24 years later would use the revision as a test of whether he and Arigo Boito could work together. They created an entirely new scene to conclude Act One (the Council Chamber scene) and tweaked the rest. Boito and Verdi were canny enough not to let the new scene overbalance the old. But you cannot help wishing that the two had started again from scratch. Yet for some people, Simon Boccanegra remains their favourite Verdi opera, its distinctive dark tinta being profoundly seductive.

Opera North chose the work for their 2025 concert staging, launching the production in Bradford on 24 April for the City of Culture celebrations and ending the tour on Saturday 24 May 2025 at the Royal Festival Hall, when we caught the performance.

PJ Harris' production put the Opera North Chorus and Orchestra (47 singers, 64 instrumentalists) at the centre, using the full space of the auditorium and providing an acting area for the soloists at the front of the stage. There was very little that was semi- about this staging. Stripped down, perhaps, full acted and compelling, definitely. The climactic Council Chamber scene might have lacked the claustrophobic sense of a conventional staging, but having the chorus surrounding the audience in the stalls was something again, particularly combined with Roland Wood's magisterial performance in the title role.

Verdi: Simon Boccanegra - Andrés Presno, Sara Cortolezzis - Opera North (Photo: James Glossop)

Anna Reid's costumes were contemporary with an elegant classical structure providing flexible locations. In a famously complex opera, clarity was all here with different coloured banners and rosettes for the Plebeans and the Patricians. Inevitably, this lacked the atmospheric chiaroscuro that the opera cries out for, but Harris and his team created and impressive two and three-quarter hours of sustained tension. 

Antony Hermus conducted with Roland Wood as Simon Boccanegra, Sara Cortolezzis as Amelia, Andrés Presno as Gabriele [we saw him as Cavaradossi in Puccini's Tosca with Opera North in 2023, see my review], Vazgen Gazaryan as Fiesco, Mandla Mndebele as Paolo and Richard Mosley-Evans as Pietro, plus Laura Kelly and Ivan Sharpe from the chorus as Amelia's maid and a captain.

This was an impressively balanced cast, which is something the opera needs. It cannot be carried by a single singer alone.

In the title role, Roland Wood physically and vocally incarnated Simon Boccanegra, mixing the rough edges of the former buccaneer with political nous, world weariness and tenderness. Wood's speech in the Council Chamber scene (the nearest thing to an aria that the character has) was impressively part of a sustained dramatic arc, whilst his death scene was pleasingly untheatrical.

Verdi: Simon Boccanegra - Roland Wood, Antony Hermus, Sara Cortolezzis, Andrés Presno - Opera North (Photo: James Glossop)

One of the features of the opera is Verdi's use of duets and ensembles. In Act One, Wood's duet with Sara Cortolezzis as Boccanegra and Amelia discovered the father/daughter relationship was a particular highlight, a moment that was adjusted rather than re-written between 1857 and 1881, highlighting Verdi's intense focus on troubled father/daughter relationships. Another intensely powerful moment was the trio in Act Two when Boccanegra, Amelia and Gabriele (Wood, Cortolezzis and Presno) worked through  their relationships. A moment here that the singers made so intense that it held up the action. Terrific stuff.

The young Italian soprano Sara Cortolezzis was a terrific find as Amelia. Cortolezzis has the fluidity and flexibility required, so that her Act 1 cavatina was a thing of beauty, yet there was power too. Though dowdily dressed in Act 1, this Amelia was no shy virgin, Cortolezzis imbued the music with strength too. Then in the Council Chamber scene, she combined real dramatic intensity in her intervention with a pellucid trill at the end. This was a performance that made you realise that Amelia is not a one dimensional character. I long to hear Cortolezzis in other Verdi roles.

Andrés Presno sang Gabriele with vibrant, burnished tone, sense of line and an ardent vitality that, vocally, really brought the character alive. Gabriele begins as a rebel, wanting revenge on Boccanegra for executing his father, and gradually his stance changes. Dramatically Presno was a bit too robust and solid, reliable but not as intensely ardent physically. This Gabriele never felt quite rash enough, yet close your eyes and it was all there in the voice.

Verdi: Simon Boccanegra - Roland Wood, Mandla Mndebele - Opera North (Photo: James Glossop)

Armenian-German bass Vazgen Gazaryan was similarly vocally impressive as Fiesco and Gazaryan successfully brought the necessary slow burn to the role making his final scene the climax to the prologue set 25 years before. But in between, there where moments when Gazaryan's Fiesco seemed to be too much the defeated, sad old man without the constant burning desire for revenge.

Mandla Mndebele made Paulo physically impressive and dominant, a finely entitled figure who opened Act Two with a vividly chilling monologue of revenge. Powerful stuff. And he was aided and abetted by the useful idiot of Richard Moseley-Evans' Pietro.

The chorus was in glorious form, coming and going in schematic yet telling fashion, filling the auditorium with sound and presence in the Council Chamber scene, and a warm enveloping sound at the end of the opera. One of the advantages of this format was the ability to hear such a full chorus on prime form.

Under Antony Hermus' flexible direction, the orchestra producted a sense of beauty in the prelude, yet also imbued the opera with that dark tint that it needs, and the Council Chamber scene with its rough edges and rasping brass was vividly disturbing.

Verdi: Simon Boccanegra - Opera North (Photo: James Glossop)

This was a very satisfying and compelling performance. A real sense of ensemble ensured that the plot's complexities never derailed the performance and all five principals made us interested in their characters, these people mattered.

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