Metropolitan Opera Archives

If energy is art, then Himalayan heights were scaled, vocally and dramatically, by Maria Jeritza and Giovanni Martinelli in "Fedora" at the Academy last night. With these two exuberant amorists holding the stage most of the evening, the second performance of the current Philadelphia season of the Metropolitan Company was virtually a rubber stamp repetition of that which marked last years' revival of Umberto Giordano's musical setting of the play Sardou fashioned for Bernhardt, for the present cast has only a few minor changes from that seen at the Academy last December 18.

Shoddy will show, and Giordano's music seemed more woefully weak than ever last night, despite the ardent efforts of Jeritza, Martinelli and their associates in the cast and the orchestral enthusiasm worked up by Gennaro Papi at the conductor's stand. So the appreciation evoked must be attributed almost wholly to the work of the interpreters, who were recalled four times after the second act, with the veteran Antonio Scotti and Mr. Papi sharing the applause with Mme. Jeritza and Mr. Martinelli, although there was nothing approaching the ovation which punctuated the performance of eleven months ago.

What was said of the opera at that time applies equally to last night's presentation. It was essentially a theatrical occasion, with a minimum of musical interest or value. Lyrical opportunities are few in Sardou's play of the Russian princess, Fedora, who finds her lover dying in the first act, traps the murderer into a confession in the second act, falls in love with the slayer upon learning he killed the man who betrayed his wife, and then ends her life by poison when she realizes that she has doomed the avenger whom she now loves.

Giordano has equipped this plot with a pink and pretty aria for the tenor in the second act, a folk tale melody that was effectively sung by Mr. Scotti, a dramatic duet at the end of the second act, and a piano nocturne on the stage in the first act. But while the score has much sound and fury, it never glows with the fires of inspiration.

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