With Cavalleria rusticana (1890), his first opera and the liminal title of Italian verismo, Pietro Mascagni (1863-1945) was assured a place of privilege in operatic history. In a single act, the composer distilled the unbridled passion—and jealousy—of a woman betrayed. Revenge followed, and with it the offstage duel fatal to her guilty lover. So goes life in a Sicilian village in the late 19th century as depicted in the libretto based on the Giovanni Verga novella (1883). That more than one reviewer credited the success of the piece to its high drama rankled the composer.
In response, Mascagni next chose “a simple libretto, something almost insubstantial, so that the opera will be judged entirely on its music.” Like Cavalleria, L’Amico Fritz (1891) has a rural setting, sylvan Alsace. But here, the similarity ends. In Fritz, a “commedia lirica,” the eponymous hero is a confirmed Jewish bachelor and wealthy landowner. David, the local rabbi, takes it upon himself to awaken his “friend’s” love for Suzel, the daughter of one of his tenants. The happy ending promises the couple an imminent wedding.
L'Amico Fritz enjoyed enormous acclaim at its Rome premiere, was soon conducted
by none other than Gustav Mahler in Hamburg and was taken up quickly by other European
companies. Yet the work failed at the Met in 1894. Since
then, L’Amico Fritz has been heard a mere handful of times in New York,
has survived on the margins of the core repertoire in Italy, and is only
occasionally presented elsewhere. Perhaps, bent on an “insubstantial” plot so
as to privilege his music, and as a rebuke to the critics of his first opera,
Mascagni compromised the afterlife of his second.
If productions are rare, recordings of L’Amico
Fritz are plentiful: we have at least ten editions on CD or DVD, some taken
from live performances, two produced in the studio. The most popular excerpt,
the Act II “Cherry Duet,” is on YouTube in a plethora of versions. Here, drawn
from a 1969 complete studio recording, are Luciano Pavarotti and Mirella Freni
at their peak. Fritz and Suzel, still hesitant to express their feelings for
each other, sing instead the praises of music and Springtime.
Earlier, Suzel offers a bouquet of violets to
Fritz along with her Act I “Son pochi fiori (Just a few flowers).” In a clip
from a 1980 studio recording Leona Mitchell lends her rich, well-equalized
timbre to both the aria’s dramatic opening and its expansive conclusion.
Between 1890 and 1935 Mascagni published
fifteen operatic scores, many bearing labels that signal their diverse genres—lyric
comedy, tragedy, drama, melodrama, idyll, among others. His 1917 “drama lirico,”
Lodoletta, is based on Ouida’s 1874 novel, Two Little Wooden Shoes. The title character, a Dutch orphan, and Flammen, a French painter
exiled in Holland, are chaste lovers. When Flammen is pardoned, Lodoletta
follows him to Paris in Act III and, mistakenly thinking him unfaithful, dies
in the snow on his doorstep.
Lodoletta, moderately successful at its Rome premiere, was greeted with even less enthusiasm elsewhere. The Met’s most bankable cast notwithstanding--Geraldine Farrar, Enrico Caruso, Pasquale Amato--the opera managed to string together very few repetitions in two seasons. A single aria, Lodoletta’s “Flammen, perdonami (Flammen, forgive me),” is familiar to contemporary operaphiles in the excellent renditions of Freni, Renata Tebaldi, Renata Scotto, and Renée Fleming.
And then there is Mafalda Favero. Favero and Jussi Björling made their Met debuts in a 1938 La Bohème. The tenor went on to a long career with the company; the soprano, detained in Italy by World War II, never again returned to the United States, alas. Favero’s 1941 recording of “Flammen, perdonami” is unforgettable. The exceptional clarity of her diction captures the crushing pathos of the dying Lodoletta.
Accessible on YouTube is a complete recording of L’Amico Fritz conducted by the composer and starring Ferruccio Tagliavini and Pia Tassinari. Roberto Alagna and Angela Gheorghiu are Fritz and Suzel in a more recent album. Strongly recommended is the “Cherry Duet” sung by Favero and Tito Schipa and also by Tagliavini and Magda Olivero.