Vienna State Opera (live stream), 29/10/2021

Cilea : Adriana Lecouvreur

Chorus and Orchestra of the Vienna State Opera

Omer Asher Fisch

It has been said, perhaps rather unkindly, that Adriana Lecouvreur mainly found its place in the repertoire as a vehicle for sopranos slightly past their best, for it offers a very effective leading role that is, relatively speaking, not too taxing vocally.  Clearly all it takes, however, is the right production.  Since Sir David McVicar's production opened on the stages of Covent Garden and the Liceu of Barcelona in 2010, it has done the tour of the world's principal houses and is still going strong eleven years later, and fading sopranos have absolutely nothing to do with it.  Rather it's the very handsome staging and costumes, and the successfully contained melodrama, that is exciting rather than excessive, that makes it work as a vehicle not for fading stars, but for ones very much at their peak, and not just the soprano, since the soprano/mezzo confrontation is one for the operatic annals.

It took this production for the Vienna State Opera to finally stage Adriana Lecouvreur, in 2014, and for this revival, they certainly baited the trap with a particularly enticing pair of female leads, Albanian soprano Ermonela Jaho as Adriana, and Latvian mezzo Elīna Garanča taking on the Princess for the first time.  Jaho is very much at the top of her game right now, and despite what I said about the role being not over-taxing vocally, it does need a very solid lower register, which is much called-upon, and which Jaho has comfortably.  She is also a much admired actress-singer, which is a serious necessity in this part, notably at the end of Act 3 where Adriana delivers a monologue in a literal melodrama or melologo, spoken text over a melodic accompaniment, requiring a very real dramatic technique to put across effectively, and which she delivered very convincingly.  Her last act was especially well done, channeling Violetta Valéry for all her worth to excellent effect.   I could wish that she made more eye-contact with her stage partners - notably Maurizio - when singing together, although that's something that the camera betrays which might not be so visible in-house, but was a bit disconcerting on the stream.  Opposite her, Garanča was superb, perfect poise on the outside, burning passion inside, the timbre particularly opulent, comfortable throughout the range, and dramatically just as persuasive.  This Princess was very much Amneris's child, headstrong, determined, entitled, cunning and with a real streak of malevolence.  

I could wish the men had been up to the same levels.  Evgeny Solodovnikov and Andrea Giovannini were comfortably adequate as the Prince and the Abbé, but Nicola Alaimo was vocally uneven, especially in the first act, as Michonnet, resorting to parlando effects too often.  Brian Jagde was overall a good Maurizio, with a suitably valorous timbre in general, and reasonably expressive, but there's a lean edge to his voice that I thought did not marry very well with Jaho's (whereas it did mesh with Garanča's), which undercut their duets somewhat.  The quartet of actors was well balanced, but not precise enough, again, notably in the act 1 sextet.

Finally though, like so much of this type of repertory, it's the conductor who really has to sell the piece, to present it at its best, and in the most advantageous light, and in this I felt Asher Fisch was a little lacking.  The Vienna State Opera Orchestra is a magnificent instrument - bear in mind that all the Vienna Philharmonic's players are recruited from the Opera Orchestra - but it can fall into a routine fairly easily, and it takes the conductor to rouse them from that.  I think that Fisch is good support for the singers, but he doesn't have the extra spark to transmit to the orchestra to lift them from merely a high level of competence, and to make, for example, the most of the doom-laden prelude to the last act. Still, I'm fairly sure we were all, online or in-house, there for the leading ladies, and they certainly delivered admirably.

[Next : 6th November]