The overwhelming popularity of Cav and Pag means
that verismo opera tends to be associated with violent
passions bursting through a thin surface of respectability,
family loyalty and religious devotion among “real life”
working class communities.
But it is not only peasants or factory workers who live real
lives. Princesses, counts, secret policemen and anarchists
live them too and, providing they steer clear of the more fantastical
trappings of the operatic stage, can be just as verismo
as those more familiar betrayed young women or jealous clowns
on the verge of utter madness.
Similarly, while Mascagni’s and Leoncavallo’s warhorses
encourage us to think of the genre as largely confined to the
impoverished communities of the hot Italian south, verismo
action is just as true to life in St Petersburg, Paris or Berne
- the settings in Fedora - as in Salerno, Palermo or
Brindisi.
Less well known than it ought to be, Fedora remained
- apart from the tenor’s brief but show-stopping aria
Amor ti vieta - largely unheard from the 1930s until
the 1990s when this very production spearheaded a steady revival
of interest. That rebirth quickly built up a head of steam and
the stars here, Freni and Domingo, can actually be found on
rival DVD sets - this one from 1993 (previously available on
the TDK label) and a Metropolitan Opera production from New
York that was recorded four years later (DG DVD 073 2329).
The first thing to note about the performance under consideration
is that both Freni and Domingo were at the height of their powers.
Both sing magnificently and very movingly and they act, too,
with real commitment, putting into practice a philosophy that
Freni had expressed a few years earlier: “You cannot sing
on stage the way you do in the Conservatoire. You have to do
it with all your heart, you have to feel the meaning of the
words, and experience the dramatic truth at every moment; you
have to know how to listen to the music coming out of the pit
and how to blend your sound with the orchestra’s. Operatic
singing is not an academic act, it is an artistic act.”
(Quoted in Diva: great sopranos and mezzos discuss their
art by Helena Matheopoulos [London, 1991], p.93.)
While, however, the sounds these artists make are truly magnificent
and their acting on is very well done indeed, there is one particular
caveat that needs to be made: this production is best watched
without subtitles, so that you can follow the general drift
of the plot without noticing that the words being sung are occasionally
at odds with what we are watching. Arturo Colautti’s tightly
constructed libretto (after Victorien Sardou) makes, after all,
specific and repeated reference to Loris’s youth. Fedora
often calls him a boy and her paramour’s own mawkishly
juvenile, not to say positively Oedipal, invocations of his
dear mother similarly suggest someone who is scarcely past puberty
in his emotional development. With Freni a pretty well-preserved
58 and Domingo only six or so years younger, I found the absence
of a clearly visible age gap really jarring - though it is worth
noting that my colleague Robert J. Farr, reviewing an earlier
DVD incarnation of this production, thought Domingo to be “vocally
and visually[my emphasis]ideal” (see
here). In fairness, too, let me add that watched on its
own terms - and with, as I recommend, those subtitles switched
off - the story works just as well as a drama involving two
middle aged protagonists.
This production was clearly cast from strength, and all the
supporting roles are well filled by singers who know what they
are about. The very experienced Gianandrea Gavazzeni applies
all his vast experience to the score with which both he and
his players are in evident sympathy. Sets and costumes are evocative
and effective and the direction for TV and video is unobtrusively
efficient. There is a booklet essay by Werner Pfister which,
given Fedora’s comparatively low profile - it fails
to earn any entry at all in the 700-odd pages of Stanley Sadie’s
The New Grove Book of Operas - will be useful to many
who come to it for the first time.
Rob Maynard
Princess Fedora Romazoff - Mirella Freni 
[113:00] 
