Every decade or so, the
Metropolitan Opera revives Adriana Lecouvreur, the only title
in Francesco Cilea’s oeuvre that can be said to figure,
however marginally, in the contemporary repertoires of international opera
companies. Adriana is back at the Met this season and was seen
in cinemas “Live in HD” earlier this month. Like the far better-known
Giacomo Puccini, Cilea (born in 1866, died in 1950) was an adherent of Verismo,
or more accurately of the “giovane scuola (the young school. See our
post of January 3, 2018, “What is Verismo?” https://operapost.blogspot.com/2018/01/what-is-verismo.html). And like Floria Tosca,
Adrienne Lecouvreur was a diva, though not a fictional 19th-century
Italian opera star but a historical 18th-century French tragedienne.
Cilea began work on Adriana
Lecouvreur in 1900 after the 1899 success of L’Arlesiana,
the other of his compositions that continues to have some
currency. Premiered at the Teatro Lirico of Milan, Adriana,
together with L’Arlesiana starred the young Enrico Caruso
who contributed to the success of both works. In 1907, Adriana opened
the Metropolitan season with Caruso opposite the soprano Lina Cavalieri. A
run of only three performances tells the story of the sorry reception
Cilea’s work received in New York that year. The most authoritative New
York reviewer deemed that Cavalieri “has neither beauty of voice nor excellence
of song to recommend, but who can make pictures.” Following its initial fiasco, it
took almost sixty years, and the persuasive powers of the reigning prima donna,
Renata Tebaldi, for the opera to return to New York. Bad luck ensued once
again: in vocal crisis, Tebaldi cancelled her last appearances.
In
those sixty years, Adriana was very much alive in Italian
theatres. And after 1950, Magda Olivero, who had come out of a nine-year
retirement at the behest of Cilea himself, made the title role her own. We are
fortunate to have a transcription of a 1959 Naples performance where she
replaced an indisposed Tebaldi. Here is Adriana’s entrance aria, “Io son l’umile
ancella (I am the humble handmaiden),” preceded by a few spoken lines from Racine’s
tragedy, Bajazet, that the actress is
about to perform on the stage of the Comédie Française. Adriana rehearses two
deliveries, the second in a more emphatic style that better suits the text.
There follows the aria in which Adriana explains to the assembled admirers that
she is a mere servant of the author’s genius. Conductor Gianandrea Gavazzeni
described the Olivero magic that brought the Naples audience to its feet, as it
had and would so many others: “the shade and light of the vowels, the detached
notes, the light legato, the true legato, the space between the words” (for
more on Magda Olivero, see our posts of September 9, 2014, https://operapost.blogspot.com/2014/09/magda-olivero-1910-2014.html "Magda Olivero,
1910-2017 , and September 16 2014, “More Magda Olivero: Two Death Scenes” https://operapost.blogspot.com/2014/09/more-magda-olivero-two-death-scenes.html .
Later in Act I, Maurizio
arrives and declares his love for Adriana, praising her beauty in the short
aria “La dolcissima effigie (The sweetest of semblances).” The passionate,
devil-may-care tenor is Rolando Villazon; the aria is from a 2007 recital CD.
At the
beginning of Act II we meet Adriana’s rival in love, the Principessa di
Bouillon. She is unsure of Maurizio’s affections, anxious over their
forthcoming tryst, and yet hopeful that the evening star will smile on their
affair. In this 1955 video excerpt from Italian television, we see Fedora
Barbieri, a leading exponent of the dramatic mezzo-soprano manner. Barbieri offers
an object lesson in the explosive style apt for the agitated opening section,
and the broad lyric effusion of the final lines.
In Act IV, Adriana meets
her death by breathing the scent of flowers poisoned by the enraged Principessa.
Tebaldi, in a recital disk made in the mid-1950s, gives an account of “Poveri
fiori (Poor faded flowers)” that shows her in peak form, her honeyed timbre in
service to the long, legato phrases and the subtlest changes of dynamics.
Post Script:
If Adriana is Cilea’s gift to sopranos, the tenor lead of L’Arlesiana is his present to
tenors. Federico, love-sick for the unnamed and unseen woman from Arles,
envies his companion, the sleeping shepherd. He yearns for the oblivion that
would allow him to forget the faithless object of his infatuation. In this 1928
recording, with great simplicity and palpable sincerity, Tito Schipa captures Federico’s
despair in the unbearable heartbreak of the culminating phrase, “Mi fai tanto
male. Ahimè! (You wound me so deeply. Dear God!).”