Riccardo ZANDONAI (1883-1944)
Francesca da Rimini (1914)
Francesca - Sara Jakubiak (soprano)
Paolo il Bello - Jonathan Tetelman (tenor)
Giovanni lo Sciancato - Ivan Inverardi (baritone)
Malatestino dall’Occhio - Charles Workman (tenor)
Samaritana - Alexandra Hutton (mezzo-soprano)
Ostasio - Samuel Dale Johnson (bass)
Biancofiore - Meechot Marrero (soprano)
Garsenda - Mané Galoyan (soprano)
Altichiara - Arianna Manganello (mezzo-soprano)
Adonella - Karis Tucker (soprano)
Smaragdi - Amira Elmadfa (mezzo-soprano)
Ser Toldo Berardengo - Andrew Dickinson (tenor)
Il giullare - Dean Murphy (baritone)
Il balestriere - Patrick Cook (tenor)
Il torrigiano - Thomas Lehman (baritone)
Berlin Deutsche Opera Chorus
Berlin Deutsche Opera Orchestra/Carlo Rizzi
rec. 14 and 17 March 2021, Deutsche Oper Berlin
Picture format: NTSC 16:9
Sound format: PCM Stereo / DTS 5.1
Subtitles: Italian, English, German, French, Japanese, Korean
NAXOS NBD0142V Blu-ray [140 mins]
Zandonai’s best-known operatic score is a real pottage of self-contradictions. In an attempt to evoke the mediaeval atmosphere of Francesca da Rimini, the composer introduces onstage a whole raft of renaissance instruments and then gives them full-blooded romantic music to play. Having introduced his hero with a long lyrical passage in Act One without giving him a note to sing, and writing largely lyrical music for him in the later Acts, he introduces him to the audience in Act Two with a passage of excoriating self-loathing and recrimination which starts where Tristan leaves off – and this in an opera which has been described as an Italian version of Tristan und Isolde! The part for the heroine requires an equally wide range of expression, extended over a rather longer period; and as her villainous husband, the baritone enters (even later than the hero) with a challenging roar that makes Scarpia seem like a shrinking violet in comparison. Not surprisingly, the opera demands the utmost from its principals, and any weakness in casting is mercilessly exposed even when the score is subjected to the niggling cuts that have made their appearance over the years, presumably in an attempt to be considerate to the singers. These of course only serve to make the opera appear more melodramatic and abrupt than it is.
So far the version of Francesca da Rimini which comes closest to satisfying the composer’s extravagant demands has been the DVD from the Metropolitan Opera with the stellar cast of Plácido Domingo in Otello-like tones, the plangent if sometimes unsteady Renata Scotto, and the stentorian and violent Cornell MacNeil abetted by the full-blooded orchestral tempest conjured up by James Levine and a DG recording that still sounds excellent. The score, too, is mercifully left intact. Moreover the production, which could be – and indeed has been – condemned as a ‘museum piece’ which mindlessly reproduces the librettist and composer’s ‘old-fashioned’ scenario, matches the music and reflects every one of the multifarious changes of mood in the setting. In fact, to my mind, this is one of the few operatic productions on video which comes close to being an ideal representation of the opera it presents, never cheapening the drama or striving for gratuitous effect, but remaining imaginative and conjuring up the required sense of beauty where needed, without stinting on the violence elsewhere. Needless to say, the whole production stirred up a hornets’ nest of unfavourable reviews from some quarters, and it is interesting to understand that this new Berlin production from Christopher Loy seems to have met with a much less hostile critical reception. In the aftermath of Loy’s most successful revival of Korngold’s similarly romantic and overblown Das Wunder der Heliane a few years ago (starring the same leading soprano, and which I reviewed with pleasure for this site) this Francesca da Rimini certainly whetted my appetite.
And indeed there are some marvellous touches in Loy’s staging, updated to a clearly contemporary milieu; the movement of Francesca’s emaciated and mortally ill sister Samaritana down the stairs just before the closing pages of Act One exactly reflect the doom-laden and sombre mood of the music at that point, for example. But against that has to be set some really catastrophic alterations of Zandonai and d’Annunzio’s carefully judged stage directions, and the most blatant of these comes in that same scene. The composer and librettist specifically state that when Paolo first enters, Francesca is struck into motionless silence by his appearance; and the slow growth of the orchestral lyricism says everything that needs to be said at that moment. Here the whole effect is wilfully ruined; Paolo comes forward and kisses her on the mouth (incidentally ruining by anticipation the point at the end of Act Three when he does actually do so), and then leaves her gazing into space as his place is surreptitiously taken by his lame (not very lame, in this production) brother as the music fades away in a passage of delicate pre-Raphaelite beauty which the composer clearly never intended to be ironic. Here the music for the opening of Act Two charges in, after the briefest of pauses, for the change of scene (although there is here no such change), and Francesca suddenly comes out of her trance to realise that she has been deceived. There is hardly time for this to register when the battle music which constitutes most of Act Two begins, and she is suddenly transformed into the noble lady awaiting the arrival of her brother-in-law who comes back onto the stage almost immediately after he has left it. Quite apart from the ridiculous telescoping of the time involved here, it also makes the behaviour of Paolo seem utterly cynical and heartless. This fatal initial misjudgement then leaves nowhere for the two lovers to go as their passion develops; the quiet passage at the end of Act Three as they first kiss is made the excuse for a torrid sexual encounter leaving Paolo stripped to the waist and the two of them entangled on the floor, where Francesca’s modest and delicate refusal – “no, Paolo!...” becomes an act of pure coquettishness. If we cannot believe in the emotional truth of the lovers’ feelings, what is the point of the whole exercise? And if Paolo is every bit as heartless and thoughtless as his brothers, what indeed is the point of him in the first place?
This is not the only point at which the enthusiasm of Loy for physical expression runs away with him. In the opening scene a minstrel is bullied by Francesca’s brutal brother, who suspects him of being a spy in the pay of the Malatestas, and is brusquely dismissed. In the Mafioso atmosphere of the court at Rimini here, the unfortunate player is brutally assaulted by the don’s henchmen, left with a bloody scar on his face, and then continues to gratuitously haunt all the following scenes. In the final Act, for some totally unclear reason, he is suddenly transformed into a court jester in full mediaeval gear, who then hovers outside the window during the final bars of the opera. Of course he is given nothing dramatic to do during these lengthy passages of mute observation, and it does not help that Francesca’s maid Smaragdi is also assigned long and similarly silent vigils for no apparent reason except to give a slightly sinister impression which is not warranted by anything either in the action or the music. The lack of scene change into Act Two also further destroys the sense of reality when the battle appears largely to take place in the Rimini drawing room, complete with its floral patterned wallpaper. That goes beyond irony, or Brechtian alienation; it just looks cheap. Even the careful observation of the dying Samaritana in Act One has its obverse disadvantages, when her entrance during the delicate music of the offstage madrigal is allowed to upstage the first appearance of Francesca (and there the reappearance of the duffed-up minstrel disturbs the mood of the moonlit orchestration even further).
Which is all the more distressing, since musically the performance is excellent. The lack of opportunity for realistic depiction of the battle scene may perhaps be regarded as justification for a couple of briefish cuts in the music (although it cruelly taxes the singer of Paolo, on stage and delivering at full volume almost without a break when the intervening battle music is omitted) but otherwise Carlo Rizzi presents the score without any of the cuts which marred many earlier sound recordings. Jonathan Tetelman as Paolo displays a magnificent voice (and fine torso) which can extend from the most delicate of quiet shadings to the full-blown stentorian delivery required elsewhere – this is a far cry from the bullish Mario del Monaco in his pioneering Decca recording of the scenes from the opera by which I suspect many of my generation first made the acquaintance of Zandonai. As recorded here he is generally the equal of Domingo in the Metropolitan staging, and his quiet singing is even better. Similarly Sara Jakubiak as Francesca, while rising to the heights with great passion, is even more effective than Scotto at the Met in her many quiet passages; the opening of the final scene, reminiscent of Desdemona’s anticipation of death in Otello, has a real sense of dread and doom. Ivan Inverardi as her unwanted husband is not quite as bullishly stentorian as Cornell MacNeil, but he still manages to rise to the many stratospherically high passages and even to overcome the fact that his Scarpia-like entrance has been unnecessarily anticipated by his sheepishly grinning sibling onstage at the end of Act One (another point which undermines the music). The only weak link among the principals is Charles Workman as the spiteful brother, whose lyrical voice lacks character and force when it is most needed, as he betrays the lovers to the jealous husband. Nor is the uncredited shrieking of his (mercifully offstage) torture victim as harrowing as it ought to be, although during passages such as these Rizzi does his best to compensate for any lack of tension by the violence with which he delivers Zandonai’s raucous orchestral commentary. Indeed the orchestral contribution is even crisper and clearer than under Levine at the Met, and the playing of the onstage band (often visible) is neat and precise.
Those who are allergic to the Metropolitan Opera style of production, clearly old-fashioned but adhering closely to the original stage directions, may well find the new interpretation by Loy to be refreshing even when it appears perverse and undermines the music. It is certainly dramatically coherent – this is no unthinking example of Regietheater – and the singing is generally fully worthy of the score. The production appears to have been recorded in the absence of an audience (with the chorus confined to the wings), and the lack of applause with which the Met audience sometimes annoyingly interrupts the music is a positive advantage; but at the same time those encountering the opera for the first time may well find that the older DG set is a safer option. On the other hand again, the sheer musicality of the performers here – demonstrating once and for all that Zandonai’s opera is far more than a simple verismo barnstormer – is its own recommendation. I might add that Jim Pritchard, reviewing this production last year for the Seen and Heard pages of this site, was decidedly less enthusiastic describing Francesca as an “intensely dramatic hotch-potch” which merited “well-deserved obscurity.” (I might add, for the sake of completeness, that there is a third video alternative available on Arthaus; but since that also has a single set throughout, and the singing is generally inferior, it would seem to lose out to its rivals on all grounds.)
The Blu-Ray picture is excellent, and as usual Naxos furnish us with a substantial booklet complete with track listings and an interview with the producer. Subtitles come in Italian, English, German, French, Japanese and Korean, but it should be noted that the English translations sometimes sit uneasily with the modern setting. Critics frequently like to complain that Zandonai’s operas lack melodic distinction; but I suspect this may simply be the result of a lack of familiarity, since the richly developed ‘viola pomposa’ melody at the end of Act One is one that really sticks in the memory. So is the beautiful offstage madrigal during the same Act, which reappears as the prelude to the final scene (when that is not cut, as indeed it is on some of the older sets taken from live performances). This is certainly music that should be heard more often, and we should not be so ready to dismiss it as unmemorable until we give ourselves the chance to know it better.
Paul Corfield Godfrey
