Conflicting passions

Francesco Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur, his biggest success, dating from 1902, leads a fringe existence, but it persists thanks primarily to the name role, dramatically meaty and not imposing too great a strain on the performer.

Francesco Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur, his biggest success, dating from 1902, leads a fringe existence, but it persists thanks primarily to the name role, dramatically meaty and not imposing too great a strain on the performer. It has been mainly associated with singers at a fairly late stage — or thinking they were — of their career, Magda Olivero and Renata Tebaldi being the most notable. What is undeniable is that it is a vehicle, primarily for the prima donna, but to a lesser extent for her mezzo rival, the Princesse, and for the object of their affections, the tenor role of Maurizio Count of Saxony.

The Royal Opera’s programme book, for the first production there since 1906, doesn’t stint on pointing out that it is a theatrical work about theatre people, and the production itself doesn’t allow us to overlook that very obvious point either. It would hardly be worth mentioning if it weren’t for the distorting way in which this production makes the work end: the heroine has been sent violets by her rival, she kisses them, they are poisoned and she dies in the arms of Maurizio, after a moderately protracted aria in which she identifies herself with the Muse of Tragedy.

That takes place in this production behind the scenes at the Comédie Française (at Adriana’s house in the text), so the actors on the onstage stage walk to the back of it and applaud her death. That does seem to be taking things too far, and is the only emphatic piece of directorial intrusion by David McVicar.