Adriana Lecouvreur

Aleardo_Villa

Daniela Dessì

‘Poveri fiori’ (poor flowers), Adriana sings in one of the most moving arias in the history of opera, smelling the bunch of wilted violets. If only we could warn her, because those violets are poisoned, you can smell the contamination even from your armchair in front of the TV. And indeed they prove fatal. She launches into a big monologue, and that was it! Tutto e finito.

The orchestra plays a few more bars, and then there is the final chord. Pian-pianissimo, and so movingly beautiful that my tears, which had already begun to flow at the beginning of the last act, turn into a veritable flood.

Portrait of Lecouvreur (ca. 1725), by anonymous artist, based on her first appearance at the Comédie-Française, and located in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Châlons-en-Champagne

The real Adriana, a star of the Comédie Française, died in Voltaire’s arms in 1730. Eugene Scribe made her immortal by creating a play about her life and her role was played by the greatest actresses of the time: Sarah Bernhardt, Eleonora Duse, Helena Modjeska.

The opera, which Francesco Cilea based on the play, thus requires a singer with the greatest acting skills, such as a Mafalda Favero, Magda Olivero or Renata Scotto.

Daniela Dessi, by the way, can do both the singing and the acting. 21 years ago (the recording was made at La Scala in January 2000), her sound was still lyrical, but already well developed dramatically. A true lirico-spinto, even if it was still a bit ‘in spe’ then.

Maurizio was one of Sergei Larin’s favourite roles, he also sang it in 2006 in Amsterdam (Saturday Matinee) alongside Nelly Miricioiu. The much-lamented Latvian tenor (he died in January 2008 at the age of 51) presents a beautiful and elegant sound, not devoid of passion, but still without the ‘roar’ that marred his last performances.

Olga Borodina is a deliciously mean Principessa di Bouillon and Carlo Guelfi a sonorous Michonnet, although his voice lacks ‘that certain something’, that made Sherrill Milnes one of the best interpreters of the role.


Roberto Rizzi Brignoli elicits from the orchestra all the colours of the rainbow and then some more. Here he is at the very beginning of his career (I once wrote: remember that name, we will be hearing more from him). Now he has become one of the greatest.

For those who appreciate it: the direction and the stage setting are traditional.

Dessì and Borodina in the finale of the third act:

EuroArts 2050098

Mafalda Favero:

Magda Olivero:

Renata Scotto:

L’Arlesiana (rediscovered!)

There are more operas that derive their fame from just one aria: just think of La Wally. Or even Andrea Chenier or La Gioconda. But there can only be one winner and that is undoubtedly Cilea’s L’Arlesiana.


The aria “E’ la solita storia del pastore”, better known as Lamento di Federico is among the most beautiful and best-loved tenor arias in all opera history. Just about every tenor sings it; it is also very often found on compilation CDs or opera recitals. No wonder: who among us can keep dry eyes listening its languorous tones? And: who among us actually knows what it is about? And who has ever heard the opera in its entirety?

L’Arlesiana is still performed only sparsely, even its recordings are scarce. Strange really, but the intendants of most opera houses don’t like verism. Is there too little honour to be gained for directors?

Not that L’Arlesiana is a masterpiece. That the opera is unbalanced, Cilea himself knew that very well. He also continued to tinker with it from its premiere in 1897 until his death in 1950. He went from four acts to three, and his finest and best move was undoubtedly adding the famous interlude “La notte di Sant’Egilio”, in 1937.


Curiously, the heroine, the girl from Arles, is not even present in the opera. Well, not fysically. She is being talked about, gossiped about also and she is the cause of the ensuing drama, of which she is probably not even aware, we will never know it.


Clearly present, though, is Rosa Mamai, Federico’s mother. I read somewhere that if Santuzza (Cavalleria rusticana) had ever left Sicily and started a family of her own, she would surely have become Rosa Mamai. I was reminded of this when listening to Iano Tamar’s fantastic, highly dramatic Rosa Mamai.

Iano Tamar. Foto: Picus online

In her own “lamento” (‘Esser madre è un inferno’), she defies the limits of beautiful singing, but nowhere crosses them and she really makes us share her grief.  In doing so, she proves what we actually already knew: the opera is not about silly shepherd Federico and his desperate love for the adulterous Arlesienne. No, it is about the boundless love of a mother who wants to save her son from a fatal fate at any cost and who even goes so far as to give her consent to the marriage with “the bitch”. To no avail: in a moment of madness, Frederico plunges himself from the hayloft

Foto: Arielle Doneson

Giuseppe Filianotti has the ideal timbre for Federico: beautifully lyrical, but with enough power to meet the heavy demands of the complex role, with its many changes of mood. I truly would not know who else, perhaps apart from Beczala or Fabiano, could sing the role with as much feeling and languor. It is a real “Caruso role”; lyricism alone would not be enough.

Mirella Buonoaica’s light and agile soprano is sometimes like quicksilver: bouncy and fascinatingly beautiful. But her Vivetta also possesses enough power: should the need arise, the girl is ready to fight. It is not her fault that her lover has gone mad, remember Micaela!

Francesco Landolfi is a beautiful Baldassare, authoritarian but also very fatherly. His ‘Come due tozzi accesi’ moves me greatly. He phrases with a perfection you don’t often come across anymore and his messa di voce is astounding..

All the minor roles are also more than adequately cast and the orchestra under Fabrice Bollon plays very animatedly.

But this recording has even more to offer. It contains a lost aria by Federico: a “Una mattina m’apriron nella stanza”. We owe the discovery to Giuseppe Filianotti, who found the piece at the Museo Francesco Cilea, in a manuscript belonging to the composer. “Una mattina” was heard for the first time during this performance in Freiburg.

The original 1897 version of Lamento di Federico (note the end):

The rediscovered aria “Una mattina m’apriron nella stanza”:

CPO 7778052; recorded live juli 2012 in Freiburg

Bonus: Tito Schipa sings Il Lamento di Federico

A pleasant introduction to Cilea’s piano works

Francesco Cileais today particularly known for his opera’s Adriana Lecouvreur and L’Arlesiana, but did you know that he, himself a great pianist also composed for the piano?

I didn’t. Not that I think I missed much. It’s all very pleasant, no more. Wonderful to have in the background but the music has too little going for it. It does not sink in.

And yet I am glad someone took the trouble to record the music. It sheds a totally different light on the composer and takes him out of the shadows in which (music) history has cast him. No, Puccini he was not, and in his day piano music was already much more than just an entertaining ‘salon music’, but fair is fair: I must confess that I found it an extremely  enjoyable introduction. Not least because of pianist Sandro De Palma’s very strong advocacy of his music.

In the very Schubertian-looking sonata for cello and piano, De Palma is assisted by the not particularly virtuoso Ferdinando Calcaviello.