The Opera Locos – Peacock Theatre, London

Creators and Directors:YLLANA

Often perceived as austere and imposing, practitioners have spent years trying to make opera accessible through ticket price schemes, cinema screenings and pub opera proximity. Now Spanish company YLLANA make that connection between vocal storytelling and broad audience appeal look easy in their new show The Opera Locos, spending a few days at the Peacock Theatre. Blending the form with vaudeville, commedia dell’arte and mime, this 95-minute opera sketch show mines comedic opportunities while still celebrating the powerful and emotional impact of opera as a medium.

It adopts a comedy show format, cutting between segments and arias taken from lots of different operas and using them to tell new stories. Some of these recur throughout the performance including a tale set backstage with a washed-up performer named Alfredo coughing his way through Nessun Dorma and taking to drink before meeting an eager fan, Maria, who adores the star from his glory days. Borrowing from Madam Butterfly and La Traviata, Maria’s rom-com forms the emotional spine of the show, a clever mime that creates emotional engagement and a rousing finale, although there is a content warning on suicide themes to note here.

Other stories told in the same chapter-style throughout the show are more humorous in tone including a singing lesson for a male countertenor, Franelli, being taught a lower, and apparently more masculine, vocal range by puffed-up baritone Enrique. This initially extends to a singalong with the audience as Enrique descends into the audience with microphones calling out individuals at close range before encouraging the whole room to join in. But this too develops into a love story, a theme that eventually draws the various skits and sections together.

To create that broader engagement with opera, YLLANA pays close attention to the physical presentation of The Opera Locos, adopting a Victorian steampunk stage and costume design by Tatiana De Sarabia, David Ottone and Yeray González that suggests an amplified reality so typical of opera settings with de Sarabia, Sara Álvarez and ARTMAKERS extending the heightened style into the stylised make-up choices to complete the vision. With a great deal of gesture and slapstick, there is considerable attention to detail and polish in the presentation of The Opera Locos that adds to its appeal.

While the synopsis insists the show is also for those ‘who don’t know their Aida’s from their arias’ there is little teaching here. There is plenty of recognisable music but for those new to opera you’ll have no better understanding of the meaning of each song or the longer stories they are borrowed from at the end of The Opera Locos, nor will you necessarily know their origins. Some songs blend nicely into more recognisable pop hits from Whitney Houston and Frank Sinatra to Celine Dion, Bob Marley and The Lion King, so you don’t need to know much about opera to enjoy the show but you also won’t learn anything new either.

How far the premise of The Opera Locos can stretch to future shows without reusing the same music may affect YLLANA’s appeal to novice attendees but vocally impressive performers María Rey-Joly, Mayca Teba, Jesús Álvarez, Enrique Sánchez-Ramos and Michaël Koné seem to be having a lot of fun delivering this show.

Runs until11 May 2024