Mascagni’s L’Amico Fritz and Lodoletta: “commedia lirica” and “dramma lirico”

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 19^th 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.

Rusalka and the Slavic Revival

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In the wake of the seismic geopolitical shifts of the late 1980s, the collaboration with the unstoppable Russian maestro, Valery Gergiev, who for a decade, 1997 to 2008, was principal guest conductor at the Met, and the tide of Eastern European singers, finally allowed to flow freely into the United States, the map of the Met’s repertoire was redrawn. Between 1990 and 2014, and especially under general manager Joseph Volpe (1990-2006), the Slavic project premiered eight Russian and Czech works: Janáček, Kat’a Kabanová, The Makropulos Case, From the House of the Dead; Shostakovich, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, The Nose; Prokofiev, The Gambler, War and Peace; Tchaikovsky, Mazeppa. Eight others were reintroduced and/or more regularly revived: Borodin, Prince Igor; Tchaikovsky, Eugene Onegin, The Queen of Spades; Janáček, Jenufa; Mussorgsky, Boris Godunov, Khovanshchina; Smetana, The Bartered Bride; Stravisnky, The Nightingale. Such was the astonishing musical turn towards Eastern Europe.

Our subject in this post is Rusalka (1900), which will be presented “Live in HD” on February 25 in a new production. Its composer, Antonín Dvořák, known primarily for his orchestral and chamber pieces, also left a corpus of ten operas, of which Rusalka is, by far, the most often performed. This fairy tale work was first produced at the Met in 1993 and has had five revivals since. It has proven to be the most popular of the Slavic novelties, due perhaps to the first interpreter of the title role, Gabriela Beňačková, and then to the affection of Renée Fleming for the part. At Beňačková’s Met debut, the Wall Street Journal went out on a long, justifiable limb: “This is the most ravishing voice in the world.” Beňačková won all hearts with Rusalka’s apostrophe to the moon. Here she sings the exquisite melody in a 1988 Prague concert.

At Rusalka’s Met premiere, Dvořák’s aria was already familiar to many in the audience. They had heard it as a recital showpiece favored by lyric sopranos. A transcription of a 1950 San Francisco concert conducted by Pierre Monteux preserves for subsequent generations the wondrous timbre and the soaring ease of Dorothy Maynor whose public appearances were confined to the concert halls of Europe, and the U.S. and Latin America. An African-American artist, she was excluded from the operatic stages of her native country.

A few words for those unacquainted with the libretto. Rusalka, a wood nymph, has fallen in love with a prince who swims in her lake. She addresses her desire to the moon in her Act I aria, and begs a witch to transform her into a human being. In exchange, Rusalka is obliged to renounce the power of speech. The Prince arrives, falls in love, and carries her off to his castle. But by the time of the wedding he tires of his silent betrothed and betrays her with a Foreign Princess. In the final act, Rusalka returns to her lake and regains her voice. The repentant Prince begs for a last kiss, knowing that it will kill him. Rusalka reluctantly grants his wish, and mournfully sinks into the depth of the water. Here is their final duet sung by Kristina Opolais (the Met’s current Rusalka) and Czech tenor Pavel Cernoch, who is at present scheduled for a Met debut.

Rossini and the Stars

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It has been the stars above all who have charted the fortunes of Gioacchino Rossini’s legacy at the Metropolitan, sopranos and mezzo-sopranos, and lately tenors as well. The exception has been Il Barbiere di Siviglia, first staged in the company’s inaugural season, 1883-1884, and since then the recipient of six new productions. Il Barbiere has been on the calendar in roughly half of the Met’s by now 130 seasons and ranks thirteenth in the list of works most often performed on 39^th Street and then at Lincoln Center.

The quickening of interest in Rossini in particular and in bel canto in general--the operas of Donizetti, Bellini, and, of course, Rossini—was sparked by singers who could flaunt the virtuosity of florid music, Maria Callas in the 1950s, followed soon after by Joan Sutherland, Marilyn Horne, and Montserrat Caballé.  Since then, a veritable torrent of belcantists has been enlisted in the annual Rossini Festival held each summer in Pesaro, the composer’s Italian birthplace. 

At the Met, the Rossini era was launched in 1974 by Marilyn Horne’s assumption of the role of Isabella in L’Italiana in Algeri. And with Olga Borodina and Jennifer Larmore the title has persisted in the repertoire.  In 1975, it was the turn of L’Assedio di Corinto (The Siege of Corinth), a vehicle for the debut of Beverly Sills. Horne, once again, was the spur for the 1990 Semiramide. Cenerentola was mounted for Cecilia Bartoli in 1998; it has been revived five times with Borodina, Elina Garanca, Joyce DiDonato, and twice simulcast live in HD.  In 2009-2010, the Met put on Armida for Renée Fleming and the next year Le Conte d’Ory for Juan Diego Flórez, the first male star to lead the Rossini parade. Which brings us to La Donna del Lago. It premiered at the Met on February 16, 2015 and will be simulcast “Live in HD” on March 14.

And the feast will continue beyond this season. William Tell is on the schedule for 2016-2017 when it will be heard, at last, in the original French, in its first revival at the Met since the 1930s. Looking ahead, here is a glimpse of the splendors of this Rossini masterpiece, the transcendent ensemble that constitutes the opera’s finale. Tell, his family, and the Swiss patriots hail the rising sun that smiles on their triumph over the Austrian tyranny. The clip is from a 2003 Paris performance with Thomas Hampson and Marcello Giordani.

Rossini’s operas demand singers with virtuosic command of the bel canto style. This technique is founded on the most rigorous control of the breath, essential to the free and even use of fioritura (embellishment): melismatic trills, turns, appoggiature (grace notes), scales, arpeggios, and other figures of the bel canto rhetoric. Marilyn Horne was master of it all. We were present at a performance of Semiramide with Horne and Sutherland in Boston in the early 1960s that was a spectacular demonstration of the opera’s viability. As the Babylonian general Arsace, a bearded Horne entered and conquered with an exhibition of vocal pyrotechnics. Here she sings her first aria in a 1980 concert in Washington, D.C.

Another of Horne’s warrior roles was the title character of Tancredi. In one of Tancredi’s arias, here is countertenor David Daniels as he poaches on the dramatic mezzo’s turf. In this 1997 New York concert, Daniels traverses the three contrasting sections of the piece brilliantly, the opening dramatic recitative “O Patria,” the sweetly lyric cavatina “Tu che accendi questo core,” and the lilting cabaletta “Di tanti palpiti” whose coiling melody was the rage of Europe in the 1820s.

Watch for our next post on Rossini’s La Donna del lago.