MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger

REVIEW


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Chandos recordings
All Chandos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 

alternatively
MDT AmazonUK AmazonUS

Umberto GIORDANO (1867-1948)
Fedora - melodrama in three acts (1898)
Princess Fedora Romazoff - Mirella Freni
Countess Olga Sukarew - Adelina Scarabelli
Count Loris Ipanoff - Placido Domingo
De Siriex - Alessandro Corbelli
Dimitri - Silvia Mazzoni
A young shepherd boy - Monica Minarelli
Desiré - Ernesto Gavazzi
Baron Rouvel - Aldo Bottion
Cirillo - Luigi Roni
Boroff - Silvestro Sammaritano
Gretch - Alfredo Giacomotti
Loreck - Ernesto Panariello
Nicola - Vincenzo Alaimo
Sergio - Bruno Capisani
Michele - Renato Zanchetta
Boleslao Lazinski - Arnold Bosman
Orchestra and chorus of the Teatro alla Scala/Gianandrea Gavazzeni
Directed for the stage by Lamberto Puggelli
Set and costume design by Luisa Spinatelli
Directed for television and video by Lamberto Puggelli
rec. live, Teatro alla Scala, Milan, 1993
ARTHAUS MUSIK 107 143 [113:00]

Experience Classicsonline


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 

 

 

 

 

 


 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools






Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.