United Kingdom Giordano, Fedora: Soloists, Chorus and Orchestra of the Metropolitan Opera, New York / Marco Armiliato (conductor). Broadcast from the Metropolitan Opera, New York, to Cineworld Basildon, Essex, 14.1.2023. (JPr)
Production:
Production – David McVicar
Set designer – Charles Edwards
Costume designer – Brigitte Reiffenstuel
Lighting designer – Adam Silverman
Movement director – Sara Erde
Chorus grasp – Donald Palumbo
Cast:
Princess Fedora Romazoff – Sonya Yoncheva
Countess Olga Sukarev – Rosa Feola
Count Loris Ipanoff – Piotr Beczała
Giovanni De Siriex – Lucas Meachem
Baron Rouvel – Scott Scully
Dr Boroff – Richard Bernstein
Boleslao Lazinski – Bryan Wagorn
Grech – Lucia Lucas
Cirillo – Jeongcheol Cha
Live in HD Director – Gary Halvorson
Live in HD Host – Christine Goerke
This efficiency of Fedora marked the one hundred and fiftieth Live in HD transmission and we had been additionally instructed it was the one hundredth HD programme for principal director Gary Halvorson who Peter Gelb, the Met’s common supervisor, praised saying ‘without him we really wouldn’t be the place we’re.’ The sequence launched in 2006 with The Magic Flute similtaneously Gleb started his tenure and he defined that the concept was ‘to see how we could take the great legacy of the Met radio broadcasts [that began in 1931] and take it one step further because in the early ‘30s the Met was a pioneer using the media … With the digital technology that was suddenly available back then in 2006 … we could take the radio series and turn it into an audio-visual splendour for audiences in cinemas.’ Talking with the affable Live in HD host Christine Goerke, Gelb mentioned the affect of those broadcasts by revealing that ‘about 70% of our audience is actually outside the United States watching in cinemas right now live across 11 time zones. There is a movie theatre inside the Arctic Circle in Tromsø, Norway, where people are gathered right now watching and in the southern reaches of Uruguay and Argentina as well.’
This was all very attention-grabbing, however I realised throughout the presentation that as informative as this all was what was wanted – particularly with such an unfamiliar opera – was extra about what we’d see and listen to moderately than all this (justified) self-congratulation. It was solely till the viewers was two-thirds by way of the opera – and it was the tip of the interval – that there was a captivating perception into Fedora from its amiable conductor Marco Armiliato. He stated the way it had offered a showcase for excellent sopranos of the previous – names similar to Renata Tebaldi, Mirella Freni and Renata Scotto – who starred within the opera ‘because it is very demanding in a way … it is a long, long evening and the role is very difficult because it is very high at some points sometimes and very low in some other moments.’
Armiliato continued saying, ‘The music as well is so complex in a way because you have three different acts [set] in three different countries. The first one happens in St Petersburg, and we have the darker sound. The second act is going to be in Paris, we start with a waltz, and everything is so light and fresh. In the third part of the opera we are in Switzerland, and the sound has changed again and we have the sound of the alps, from the mountains, and typical Swiss music.’ We learnt all this simply earlier than the third act and we actually wanted to know this earlier than the opera began. It would have made me admire Umberto Giordano’s music considerably greater than I used to be at this level! I can perceive the argument I ought to have ready myself higher, however the Met must rethink their strategy for the subsequent 150 transmissions!
After two acts I used to be actually coming to phrases with why Fedora hasn’t been placed on on the Met for 25 years and, for me, that’s as a result of it’s a moderately poor opera. Intriguingly the final time it was placed on in New York in May 1997 – solely its thirty fifth efficiency since 1906 – the main singers had been Freni and Fabio Armiliato, not simply any relative however conductor Marco’s older brother and I used to be shocked he didn’t point out this.
And as for the music? Well, it was not which composers did Giordano steal from however what different extra fashionable operas owe to his Fedora rating. You will hear swathes of, for example, Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana and Puccini’s Tosca, Madama Butterfly and Turandot, and the issue is that these had their first performances after Fedora! Admittedly, it’s possible you’ll hear a few of Puccini’s Manon Lescaut and La bohème, in addition to Verdi’s La traviata and Johann Strauss II’s Die Fledermaus, which in fact predate Giordano’s opera.
The wealthy widow Princess Fedora Romazoff is engaged to a debt-ridden rely who she is supposedly head over heels in love with, although she doesn’t but know he has betrayed her with one other lady. At the sound of sleighbells, he’s carried in mortally wounded and Count Loris Ipanoff is accused of the crime and the police set out after him: Fedora swears on the cross she wears (with its hidden poison) to revenge her fiancé’s loss of life. She follows Loris to Paris and at a celebration he declares his love for her: he’s in despair as a result of she is returning to Russia whereas he’s nonetheless exiled. Loris confesses to the crime and Fedora desires to listen to the entire story later the identical night, in the meantime she informs the police about his confession. Later, Loris reveals he killed the rely – not from a political motive as Fedora assumed – however as a result of he had seduced his spouse and in reality the rely fired first and it was merely self-defence. Fedora now realises how deeply she loves Loris. Finally, we see the lovers in Switzerland the place Fedora learns to her dismay that the letter she wrote about Loris’s guilt has led to the loss of life of his brother and their mom subsequently died of a damaged coronary heart. Fedora confesses to Loris who initially refuses to forgive her however does moderately too late after she takes poison and dies in his arms.
There is an inexpensive one-act opera to be exhumed from all of the melodramatic hokum of Fedora and its two finest scenes on the finish of Acts II and III. So a lot of the plot is rushed by way of (simply hearken to the dreadful opening to Act II) merely to permit prolonged arias similar to for the coachman Cirillo’s ‘Egli mi disse’ in Act I and the show-stopping (not in a great way!) operetta-like singing from the diplomat De Siriex about Russian girls (‘La donna russa è femmina due volte’) and Fedora’s cousin Olga responding along with her aria evaluating Parisian males with Veuve Clicquot champagne (‘Eccone un altro più somigliante ancor’). The worst is but to come back within the third act with a duet for De Siriex and Olga about bicycling within the mountains which come shortly earlier than the opera’s deadly denouement.
Director David McVicar in his thirteenth manufacturing on the Met and his second one this season has been given a ridiculously giant price range for Charles Edwards’s historically stable and sumptuously furnished units. (Could cash not have been saved by recreating a few of this digitally, it’s 2023 in spite of everything?) Brigitte Reiffenstuel’s costumes are equally extravagant and Fedora’s tiara within the first act – hopefully not actual glowing diamonds – nonetheless should have price important cash. (The fedora hat obtained its title in 1887 from what Sarah Bernhardt wore as Fédora Romanoff in Victorien Sardou’s unique 1882 play.) At least the primary act set might be recycled – if the Met desires to recoup its outlay – for Eugene Onegin or The Queen of Spades; Act II’s for La traviata or The Merry Widow; and Act III’s for The Sound of Music. McVicar’s (solely?) innovation is to have Fedora haunted by the ghost of the murdered rely, notably throughout the Act II intermezzo as she writes the accusatory letter to the Police after which initially of the third act.
I used to be listening solely by way of the cinema loudspeakers however musically this Fedora sounded as if it was handled with extra respect than it probably deserved. It was properly performed by the Met’s orchestra and Armiliato’s conducting introduced sweeping ardour to the pivotal moments of emotion there are within the opera. Luxury casting noticed Rosa Feola as a bubbly Olga whose champagne aria – which Johann Strauss II would have been pleased with – suitably sparkled. Lucas Meachem changed a beforehand introduced singer – studying the function of De Siriex at quick discover – and impressed together with his heat, supple baritone. Amongst the dependable supporting forged there have been two standout performances: firstly, from Jeongcheol Cha’s resonant bass-baritone as Cirillo and Bryan Wagorn as Olga’s Polish piano protégé Boleslao Lazinski, Waghorn flicked his hair with relish and performed virtuosically onstage.
Fedora calls for two full-throated singers whether it is to be price seeing no less than as soon as: right here maybe Piotr Beczała was too full-throated and didn’t have sufficient time to heat up his voice for Loris’s well-known – and all too temporary – declaration of affection (‘Amor ti vieta’) however he was at his lyrical and Italianate finest when it mattered most. At the start I wasn’t totally certain whether or not Sonya Yoncheva’s haughty Fedora had any real emotions for the rely she was to marry, although she appeared genuinely distressed and vengeful at his loss of life. The function is a voice-shredding one and Yoncheva didn’t sing it with the whole abandon it most likely wants however, together with Beczała, was at her most dramatically and vocally convincing of their two impassioned duets: when she asks Loris to spend the evening along with her on the finish of Act II and within the tragedy of her self-inflicted loss of life on the finish of the opera.
Jim Pritchard