|
|
Opera News Review
of Edgar
by WILLIAM V. MADISON
Puccini's
second opera, Edgar (from 1889, revised 1892), is performed only rarely,
but the score is a honey. Recorded a quarter-century ago during a concert
performance by Eve Queler's Opera Orchestra of New York (Sony 34584),
the music bubbles over with promise: harmonies, textures, orchestration,
melodic invention all point to the great works to come. What the thirty-one-year-old
Puccini hadn't quite mastered, however, was the hit tune that elevates
a bad libretto, and Edgar's is a clunker. Ferdinando Fontana, working
from a justly neglected verse-drama by Alfred de Musset, depicts a high-born
hero torn between a good girl and a bad girl. That the bad girl's badness
is entirely the hero's fault goes unnoticed; she is repeatedly abused,
all because she's done what Edgar and his friend Frank asked. Puccini
had better luck with heroines who remain basically good despite their
fallen or compromised states; the virtue-vice schematization here, exacerbated
by the women's names (Fidelia and Tigrana), is dramatically unsatisfying.
|
|
New York's enterprising
Dicapo Opera Company mounted what is believed to be the first professional
staging of Edgar in North America (seen Dec. 8), directed by the company's
general director, Michael Capasso. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Capasso couldn't
get much dramatic fire going, even in the finale of Act I, when Edgar
(inexplicably) puts his house to the torch; but conductor Louis Salemno
elicited an alert, propulsive performance from an ensemble of twenty-five
players, with especially fine brass-playing in Act III. Choral contributions
(under chorus master Pacien Mazzagatti) nearly blew Dicapo's tiny basement
theater to the roof. Good-girl Fidelia has little to do beyond a pretty
aria in Act I and a lament in Act III, attractively sung by soprano Rosemary
Musoleno. The sultry Gypsy Tigrana proved congenial casting for mezzo
Lori Brown Mirabal, and she brought velvety, rounded sound to a compelling
musical characterization. As Edgar, tenor Drew Slatton lacked presence
and Puccinian ping; baritone Gregory Kiel (Frank) offered stalwart support.
John Farrell (sets) and Renata Podolec (costumes) provided simple designs.
RETURN TO DICAPO IN THE NEWS
|
