[Met Performance] CID:193000
New production
Adriana Lecouvreur {4} Metropolitan Opera House: 01/21/1963.
(Debuts: Igor Youskevitch, Casa d'Arte Firenze di Ruggero Peruzzi, Carlo Maria Cristini
Review)
Metropolitan Opera House
January 21, 1963
Benefit sponsored by the Metropolitan Opera Guild
for the production funds
New production
ADRIANA LECOUVREUR {4}
Cilèa-Colautti
Adriana Lecouvreur......Renata Tebaldi
Maurizio................Franco Corelli
Princess di Bouillon....Irene Dalis
Michonnet...............Anselmo Colzani
Bouillon................William Wilderman
Abbé....................Paul Franke
Jouvenot................Laurel Hurley
Dangeville..............Helen Vanni
Duclos..................Audrey Keane
Poisson.................Andrea Velis
Quinault................Norman Scott
Major-domo..............John Trehy
Dance...................Judith Chazin
Dance...................Patricia Heyes
Dance...................Katharyn Horne
Dance...................Igor Youskevitch [Debut]
Dance...................Ron Sequoio
Conductor...............Silvio Varviso
Production..............Nathaniel Merrill
Set designer............Camillo Parravicini
Set designer............Carlo Maria Cristini [Debut]
Costume designer........Casa d'Arte Firenze di Ruggero Peruzzi [Debut]
Choreographer...........Alexandra Danilova
[The production was designed by Carlo Maria Cristini after sketches by Camillo Parravicini.]
Production a gift of The Metropolitan Opera Guild
Adriana Lecouvreur received ten performances this season.
Review of Irving Kolodin in the Saturday Review
If the "Fidelio" was in accord with the best that Bing had promised, the revival of "Adriana Lecouvreur" was a sad concession to something he had assured us we need not fear-the star system. Tried and found wanting here as long ago as 1907, it would not have occurred to anyone to put it on again had it not occurred to Renata Tebaldi as just the sort of thing she should be doing at this phase of her career. Between the time of her decision last year ("No Adriana, no Renata") and her willingness to come this year, previous plans for a Cecil Beaton production were scrapped and a Neapolitan one copied instead. Opulently undistinguished, it suits the score perfectly in being superficially attractive and fundamentally barren of quality.
Dramatically derived from Scribe's convoluted rivalry of the actress Adrienne and the Princess de Bouillon for the love of the Count of Saxony (Maurizio in the opera), "Adriana" is theatrically vapid and musically void. It would be a laughable indulgence for a privately sponsored institution; for a public one that pleads poverty every time union pressures are exerted, this obeisance to Tebaldi's whim may have wider implications. Perhaps the money invested by the Metropolitan Opera Guild in underwriting the sizeable bill for rehearsing a large cast, chorus, and ballet as well as building the sets (probably $50,000) may be recovered, but not the time wasted in learning parts few will use again. The money would have gone far to produce such a worthy work as Halévy's "La Juive." or Boito's "Mefistofele," or even Verdi's "Giovanna d'Arco," which Tebaldi was once happy to sing, while time is the one commodity the Metropolitan traditionally has the least of.
The pretty tunes and succulent orchestration of them (even a solo violin sighing behind a declaration of love) are credited to Francesco Cilea, but surely this must be a "nom de guerre opératique" for someone named Massennini or Puccinet. There is scarcely a page or an episode in the four acts that could not be affiliated with a similar treatment in "Manon" (Parisian high life) or "Tosca" (for melodrama and theatrical atmosphere). Its several well-written arias come but do not go as they are plugged unmercifully, act after act.
Indeed, it is one of the distinctions of "Adriana" that you can miss the first act and still hear its arias in Act II, as she sings what he sang and then they sing it together. The threads of the plot may be harder to grasp this way, but they are mostly unimportant anyway. What is important is that Adrianna wears four different costumes, is admired by her fellow mummers as "Magnifica," "splendida," "portentosa" (all are in the text), has the opportunity to recite lines from two plays of Racine (as the historical Adrienne did at the Comédie Française in the early 1700s), is able to live extravagantly and die glamorously from a poisoned flower dispatched by her rival in love. Unlike those whose works he admired, Cilea cannot stiffen the musical mix with dramatic substance when an issue is joined. It remains all icing and no cake.
Tebaldi had invested much time in slimming her figure by more than twenty pounds, and she carried herself handsomely in the flowing costumes designed by "Casa Firenze." But vocal constriction now sets in at about A, which was formerly a bell she rang with consistent clarity. Only the middle had the lovely sound of old. Dramatically, Tebaldi played the part of the sawdust puppet with all the endearing belief in its reality that animates a child fondling a doll. However, in choosing a vehicle for herself, she should not have elected one in which the reins may fall into alien hands. Often enough the one in the driver's seat was not Tebaldi, but Franco Corelli, whose figure is even more spectacular than hers, whose costumes as Maurizio were worthy of a doorman at the Ritz (or the Russian Bear), and who sang the music with a ringing brilliance that was even shaded now and then to just a "forte." The role of the Princess also provides some scene-stealing moments, but not as impersonated by Irene Dalis, who used her substantial voice to good musical ends, but without theatrical magnetism.