Search - Eva Marton, José Carreras :: Giordano: Fedora [Germany]

GREAT SINGING, MEDIOCRE OPERA

Alfredo R. Villanueva | New York, NY United States | 02/22/2008

(2 out of 5 stars)

"FIRST, THIS RE-ISSUE BRINGS NO LIBRETTO AND SCANT NOTES. THE PRINCIPALS ARE WELL ESTABLISHED STARS, WHICH DOES NOT REALLY MEAN THEY ARE EXPERTS ON THE SINGING OF VERISMO. THEREFORE, THEY SOUND LIKE THEIR USUAL PHENOMENAL SELVES: TECHNIQUE BUT NO . . . FEELING. OR PERHAPS IT MAY BE THAT THIS OPERA ITSELF IS NOT TRANSCENDENTAL, IT DOES NOT MOVE THE LISTENER TO IDENTIFY WITH IT. THE STORY OF A TYPHOID MARY RUSSIAN PRINCESS WHO COMMITS SUICIDE WHEN HER LOVER DOES NOT FORGIVE HER (BUT, YES, HE DOES, TOO LATE)FOR WIPING OUT HIS FAMILY, HAS NONE OF THE UNIVERSAL THEMES A WORK OF ART MUST HAVE IN ORDER TO SURVIVE. THIS ONE DOES BECAUSE OF THE BEAUTIFUL MUSIC. BUT IT DOES NOT BEAR A SECOND LISTENING."

Good performances of enjoyable, if slight music

G.D. | Norway | 04/16/2009

(4 out of 5 stars)

"The continued popularity of Andrea Chenier seems to ensure a continued interest in Giordano's other works as well, and Fedora has always been the second famous, and still intermittently performed (somewhat curious, given that it is obviously not quite on the level of some of the less famous Mascagni operas, the Respighi ones or Alfano's best operas). It is a nice work nonetheless, with at least a couple of nice, memorable tunes - among others the Count Vladimir leitmotiv running through the opera and the famous "amor ti vieta".



But there are long stretches where the inspiration runs rather thinly as well, even though Giordano does his best to put on various types of local color (storywise by sending the characters to various places throughout the world). The problem is in part that in order to obtain those coloristic effects, he inserts large stretches of music and scenes rather obviously irrelevant to the plot - and to justify that, the music for those scenes should really come off as inspired and inventive, which they don't uniformly do (the tea party is nice, but still). In sum, this is far from being a masterpiece. Still, Giordano does manage to come up with some wonderful touches - in particular with "amor ti vieta", but the culmination of Fedora's death scene is very successful as well - and the opera is overall rather enjoyable, at least on a first listening; the various scenes are undeniably theatrically effective, if unpolished and sometimes even banal.



Eva Marton is certainly effectively theatrical and dramatic in the title role, with lots of character and flair, but little by way of subtlety and refinement. Carreras, too, seem to drop all attempts at being subtle and just launch into the drama, full-voiced and almost over-dramatic; which I guess is a very reasonable decision given the musical material at hand. And these are undeniably rather effective performances. The other roles are generally mediocre, but at least the Hungarian Radio and Television Orchestra (and the Chorus) are able to bring some subtlety into the proceedings; theirs are generally quite fine and well-judged performances. In sum, this is a rather fun release, but not really anything I'd want to return to too often. Sound quality is good, but the absence of texts deplorable."