After the creation of The Hours, by Kevin Puts, the Metropolitan Opera returned to the Italian repertoire with Fedora, opera composed in 1898 by Umberto Giordano. David McVicar’s new production ticks all the boxes, musically and dramatically.
These last decades have been those of the destruction of the myth of the “irreplaceability” of the star artist. Watch how, in 2022, the busiest conductor on the planet, Valery Gergiev, was simply wiped off the western musical planet. See also how the Met turned the page on James Levine. The scathing teaching of the projection of Fedora in cinemas around the world and the dazzling performance of Bulgarian soprano Sonya Yoncheva is that, despite the doors still being opened to her by her friends in a few European homes, much the same is true for the diva of the world lyric Anna Netrebko.
Netrebko, who thought he was so unavoidable, now drags along his compromises and his tenor husband, who we do without so well. But as Paris, London and Berlin saw long before New York, Sonya Yoncheva does things with such a grandiose aura and vocal radiance that Netrebko is already a thing of the past.
Scarcity
If we are talking about Netrebko in the circumstances, it is because Fedora by Giordano has not been presented for a quarter of a century at the Met, that the opera is rare elsewhere, because the title role is titanic: the soprano sings almost from one end to the other on the whole range register and carries with it a dramatic vehemence in all forms of feelings (love, hate, imprecations).
Fedora is therefore a role cut out for the sopranos of the pantheon: Renata Tebaldi, Magda Olivero, Mirella Freni. At the Met, the role is associated, under Levine, with Renata Scotto. The logical filiation would have been Netrebko. It turned out Yoncheva, and we didn’t miss anything, quite the contrary.
Facing her, Piotr Beczała approached with class the role of Loris written for Caruso, a bet before his imminent Lohengrin on the same stage. The fiery face-to-face and duets between the two singers were remarkable because on equal terms and qualities.
We will compliment the whole cast, with Rosa Feola as Countess Olga and the baritone Lucas Meachem in the role of the French diplomat De Siriex, but also the one-off roles in Act I, which compromise a lot when they are moderately held (perfect Jeongcheol Cha as Cyril or Laura Krumm as Dimitri).
Relevance
Fedora, new production entrusted to David McVicar, is distinguished by the taste of the latter and his team, Charles Edwards for the sets and Brigitte Reiffenstuel for the luxurious costumes. Particularly effective is the wall of the living room in Saint-Petersburg in the first act which, thanks to Adam Silverman’s lighting, becomes transparent and allows the bed in the adjoining room where Vladimir succumbs to be seen.
The excellent conductor Marco Armiliato explained well in a few words during the break the singularity of Giordano’s orchestral colors which blend according to the acts with the sets of Russia, France and Switzerland.
It remains to be seen, another question of “irreplaceability”, the relevance, today, of this type of work of ” amusement lyric” of a hundred years ago. They cemented a love of the art of singing very “opera dad” (Scotto, Tebaldi, Freni, precisely). But the renaissance of opera, given the speed at which it is taking place, will possibly lead to a split between the public with a part of the nostalgic and an increasingly majority part who will want, through this form of art, live something else.
At the movie theater, Spiderman and Star Wars have well supplanted Macist Where Empress Sissi, which in no way prevents the masterpieces of cinema from continuing. At the opera, aren’t we “carrying around” works by convention more than by necessity? In short, a tightening of the list of necessary masterpieces in the history of opera is perhaps to be expected to make room for renewal.