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Adriana Lecouvreur received seven performances this season.
Production photos of Adriana Lecouvreur by Marty Sohl/Metropolitan Opera.

FUNDING:
Revival a gift of the Metropolitan Opera Club and Bertita and Guillermo L. Martinez

Review 1:

Review of John W. Freeman in the May 2009 issue of Opera News

The offstage prologue to the Met's revival of "Adriana Lecouvreur" was almost as busy and bustling as the onstage picture in Act I. When Marcelo Alvarez, scheduled to sing the tenor lead, stepped out to replace Salvatore Licitra as Manrico in the new production of "Il Trovatore," it was Plácido Domingo - Adrian's scheduled conductor - who took over Alvarez's role of Maurizio. This timely substitution gave Domingo a chance to mark the fortieth anniversary of his unscheduled Met debut in the same role, on September 28, 1968, opposite Renata Tebaldi.

Domingo's fans were much in evidence at this season's February 6 premiere, and he did not disappoint them. Not only did he look and act the role with elegance and lively engagement, but vocally (despite a recent bout with a cold) he appeared ageless, requiring only a downward transposition here and there to facilitate his smooth, ardent delivery. His [first] aria, "La dolcissima effigie," went just fine, and his duets with Maria Guleghina in the title role had that soaring line of vintage verismo. He even made a plausible show of Maurizio's waffling between sincere love for Adriana and expedient deference toward an erstwhile mistress, the Princess de Bouillon. Furthermore, his stance bespoke a man of action, whose courtly manners barely masked his impatience to get on with weightier business in the outside world.

It was Domingo's evening, but Guleghina was not about to relinquish her prerogatives as Adriana, a role usually seen as the raison d'être for presenting this opera. Though given to a slam-bang approach in more knockabout assignments, such as Verdi's Abigaille in "Nabucco" or Lady Macbeth, the soprano has shown in the Met's "Cavalleria Rusticana" a steadier command of more manageable material, and for Cilèa's minor masterpiece she has refined her control and technique to a remarkable degree, at no sacrifice of her familiar dramatic intensity. The hard surface of her tone seals it against the melting warmth of a more Italianate approach, but in every other important aspect - shapely legato, fervent emphasis, expressive softness of dynamics - this sounded like her finest achievement to date. Her acting, too, while somewhat redolent of the silent-film era, conveyed the sincerity and depth of feeling needed to give her role life and conviction.

"Adriana" like "La Gioconda," demands a mezzo-soprano counterforce to its heroine. Both operas bring out the tiger in Olga Borodina, whose Princess belted her rival with stentorian tone, regal panache and near-contralto density. Applying relentless power of voice and personality, Borodina ensured that a person of Adriana's finer sensibilities would never stand a chance against her. As the one welcome foil in the cast, baritone Roberto Frontali played a sympathetic, touchingly reticent Michonnet. Also notable were the imposingly fatuous Prince de Bouillon of John Del Carlo, the louche Abbé of Bernard Fitch, the lightly turned Poisson and Quinault of character tenor Brian Frutiger (Met debut) and bass-baritone Philip Cokorinos, respectively.

The production, new in January 1963, designed in period style by Carlo Maria Cristini after sketches by Camillo Parravicini, has been updated by Mark Limos, who restaged the current revival, likewise in traditional fashion, adding backdrop projections to amplify the stage picture. (Midway in Act I, we glimpse the auditorium of the Comédie Française.) The showdown between Adriana and the Princess in Act III is now played front and center from the start, sapping the gradual buildup of tension in the original. Ray Diffen's costumes have been augmented with new ones by Joan Greenwood, enhancing the overall freshened-up look. Stepping into Domingo's place in the pit, Marco Armiliato shaped Cilèa's orchestration with graceful flamboyance and fluency, also shading its more subdued colors and putting enough sting into the heroine's final anguish.

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