Met Opera: Francesca da Rimini

This article was originally published on March 5, 2013

When the Met announced in its Program Notes that last evening's performance of Francesca da Rimini was the "first time this season," it was something of an understatement.  This was actually the first time this production had been seen since 1986, more than a quarter century earlier.  And before that revival, created for the Met's 1983 - 84 centennial season, the opera had been out of the repertory since 1918, a gap of 66 years.

I have to confess that I only attended the current production because it had been part of my subscription series for the season.  But I was glad I went.  The opera is more than a historical curiosity.  Although I had never previously heard any music by Riccardo Zandonai, he turned out to be a truly masterful composer.  Writing in The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, Renato Chiesa called the opera "one of the most original and polished Italian melodramas of the 20th century, [which] combines a powerful gift for Italian melody ... with an exceptional command of orchestration."  Surely, the end of Act I, where Paolo and Francesca first meet wordlessly to the accompaniment of a solo cello, is one of the most haunting passages in all opera.

The plot, of course, originates in The Inferno and contains one of Dante's more memorable lines.  While describing Paolo's and Francesca's discovery of their shared passion while reading of Lancelot and Guinevere, the poet wrote suggestively: "That day they read no more."  Dante's story was taken to a whole new level, however, by the notorious playwright Gabriele D'Annunzio in a drama he wrote for his lover, Eleanora Duse.  It was this somewhat lurid source that Tito Ricordi used as the basis for his libretto.

If the music itself has any fault, it may lie in the multiplicity of its influences.  The impressionism of Act III is abruptly followed by the pure verismo of Act IV, leading the Program Notes to comment on "the duality of sophistication and brutality that is at the core of the drama."  The Notes go on to remark "how intensely Zadonai was trying to distance this work from the conventions of Italian opera."  And it is this deliberate wish to be different, I believe, that accounts for the opera's lack of popularity.  If only Zadonai had compromised with his principles and inserted a few arias (and I'm quite sure he was capable of composing arias as charismatic as any written by Puccini), the opera would certainly be performed more often than it is today and would perhaps enjoy a place in the standard repertoire.

The current (that is, the 1984) production at the Met is all one could wish for.  Piero Faggoni's design is much lovelier and more romantic than the Met's more recent misguided attempts at relevance.  Eva-Maria Westbroek is excellent as Francesca; and Marco Armiliato handles the complex score, with all its shifts in mood and style, extremely well.