The Royal Opera Covent Garden's splendid new production of
Cilea's Adriana Lecouvreur last year came as a refreshing change
of pace. For once a new opera production set in a theater was
actually about an opera set – at least in significant part – in
a theater.
Who'd have thought? In recent years, "all the
world's a stage" seemed to have been not so much an observation
but a mandate for opera directors. Then along came David McVicar
with the idea of letting poor, neglected little Adriana be. It
turns out that Cilea's tender yet deceptively affecting tale of
a temperamental star actress from the 18th-century
Comedie-Francaise who wins and loses and wins and loses a battle
for a man whose heart she has, only to die in a bit of tragic
treachery that cross-breeds Romeo and Juliet with La Traviata,
doesn't need rescuing, just proper attention. McVicar's
cauterizingly sane production – calling it literal or
traditional overlooks how fresh and affecting it is – gives us
the action pretty much as librettist Arturo Colautti wrote it,
in and in front of a strikingly handsome proscenium theater
(designs by Charles Edwards).
Although this production
doesn't have even a smidgeon of that made-for-DVD feel, Decca's
new 2-DVD release of it (culled from live performances on Nov.
22 and Dec. 4, 2010) proves to be just the kind of opera on DVD
you want – one that invites you to watch it again and not just
to puzzle out the director's concept.
Covent Garden had
any number of reasons for putting on the dog with its new
Adriana, not the least of them being that it was the company's
first production of the work in more than a century. (And the
opera itself was new in 1902.) SF Opera lovers with long
memories will gratefully remember its fine production in 1977
with Renata Scotto, revived in 1985 with Mirella Freni, divas of
the type Adriana requires, and whose like we all too rarely see
anymore.
This is hardly the forum to discuss a work's
merit, but the relative neglect of Adriana in our lifetimes is,
as this virtually faultless realization of it demonstrates, as
incomprehensible as it is undeserved. Cilea has acquired the
reputation of writing more slender scores in the verismo style
we associate with the likes of the gutsier Mascagni,
Leoncavallo, and, pre-eminently, Puccini. But as Mark Elder's
superb conducting of the ace Covent Garden Orchestra and a
uniformly fine bank of singers, from the principals down to the
last chorister, makes abundantly clear, this is not Puccini
lite.
You do hear more than whiffs of Puccini in Cilea's
score, but no more than you would expect of any composer working
at the top of his form in the language of his day. But for that
matter – say, at the opening of Act IV, before the first voice
sounds – there's more than a hint of Wagner's Rheingold.
For most of its life, Adriana has been thought of as the
receptacle for two fine arias – Adriana's "Io son l'umile
ancella" and "Poveri fiori" – and, if there's a Caruso around
(as there was at the premiere), perhaps another, the tenor's "La
dolcissima effigie." This performance lays that idea to rest as
you hear how the opera, if not "through-composed" a la Wagner,
is thoroughly composed and exceptionally well made.
Another thing you notice is how many intricate little ensemble
episodes there are – because here they're so perfectly executed,
alert, and vital. There's not a slack moment in this production.
There's nothing apologetic about Covent Garden's Adriana,
but no clearer sign of how seriously they took the enterprise
than the luxury cast. The opera does seem to have caught the
attention of sopranos at the peaks of their careers, even
looking at the downslopes, and Angela Gheorghiu, at whose
"request" this production was made, is pretty well ideal. It's
quite possible that no less "humble servant of art" treads the
opera boards these days, but this soprano's in full service of
this role and nails it.
Jonas Kaufmann, who sang
an achingly beautiful "La dolcissima effigie" on his recent
Verismo CD, is even more persuasive with it live and in context.
Still, the wonder of his Maurizio is its alertness to every
moment of the part, sung or not, and the simply amazing degree
to which he shades it without ever seeming to fuss. Here is
audible proof that Kaufmann is the greatest Maurizio since
Caruso. Olga Borodina's Princesse de Bouillon is as
sumptuous and formidable, and she makes the villainess
chillingly credible.
But in all that vocal glory, you
won't miss Alessandro Corbelli's beautifully realized Michonnet,
whose unrequited yet undying love for Adriana increasingly feels
like our own. This production of the century could easily land
the opera itself right back in its rightful place in the
repertoire.
