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The loves and losses of theatre people and their circle swirl
through the Puccini-lite music of a rarely seen opera in an opulent new
production
How seriously should we take Adriana Lecouvreur?
Celebrated for its actress heroine's limpid arias, and the improbable murder
weapon of a bunch of poisoned violets, Francesco Cilea's 1902 opera totters
awkwardly between piquant comedy and lurid melodrama, one moment aping
Puccini, the next Massenet.
So much for verismo. Of the real
Adrienne, her soldier lover Maurizio, Count of Saxony, and the 10-year
affair they enjoyed between military campaigns, little survives the
translation from life into opera. Of 18th-century Paris, with its stench and
splendour, its veneration and condemnation of actresses, even less remains.
What lingers is a misty notion of stardom and glamour, as elusive as the
scent of those deadly flowers, and the poignant, invented character of
Michonnet, stage manager of the Comédie-Française and the only man to love
Adrienne/Adriana truly.
David McVicar's opulent production, the first
at Covent Garden since 1906, does not have to try too hard to convey the
notion of stardom. With Angela Gheorghiu as Adriana and Jonas
Kaufmann as Maurizio, glamour is guaranteed. The frocks (by
Brigitte Reiffenstuel) are gorgeous, the palette a muted cloud of dove-grey,
bronze and rose-pink, save for Gheorghiu's buttercup riding-habit in Act II.
Charles Edwards's meticulous reconstruction of an 18th-century theatre
dominates the stage: seen first from behind dressing-rooms festooned with
costumes for Racine's Bajazet (the silent backdrop to Act I), and later from
the front, when its ornate proscenium is the gilded frame for Adriana's
humiliation of her rival, the Princess of Bouillon.
If you travelled
back in time and showed a 1970s audience McVicar's Adriana, the only aspect
that might raise an eyebrow is choreographer Andrew George's Adam Ant-ish
styling of the Act III ballet of The Judgement of Paris. In the pit, Mark
Elder toils suavely over Cilea's cautious, fitfully orchestrated score. It's
a thankless task. Each act begins with tremendous energy but little sense of
purpose, period or colour. And with the toy-theatre concept and thin writing
come paper characters: the saucy, sparring Mesdemoiselles Jouvenot and
Dangeville (Janis Kelly and Sarah Castle), the pettish actors Poisson and
Quinault (Iain Paton and David Soar), the corrupt Abbé (Bona-ventura
Bottone) and the hypocritical Prince (Maurizio Muraro). As the jealous
Princess, Michaela Schuster does a mean line in fan-tapping and
bosom-heaving, tearing into "Acerba voluttà, dolce tortura" like a carnivore
released from a vegan spa.
You can understand her lust, though
Kaufmann's prime-cut Maurizio is a slippery, complex, political
figure. His acting is refined, his singing idiomatically phrased if not
idiomatic of tone. That Latin darkness still has a fake-tan tang, too
covered, too self-conciously burnished, but when he opens his Alpine top
register (in "Il russo Mencikoff") or croons into Gheorghiu's hair it is
mesmerising.
Gheorghiu herself floats mistily through the
opera, her voice now a gleaming, cossetted miniature of itself, receding
into lovely whimsy. The power is still there, but she seems disinclined to
use it much, and her acting is vague – a touch of Tosca here, a touch of
Violetta there, with far too much hair-tossing and leg-swinging for a woman
in her forties. As the wry, wise, loyal Michonnet, who sees every- thing and
never reveals his love, Alessandro Corbelli captures the mixture of humour
and pathos Cilea strove for but never quite attained in this vapid, two-hit,
verismo star-vehicle.
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