Looking for a Lost Generation

By Michael Walsh

The Met stages Zandonai's Francesca da Rimini

One of the quirks of 20th century music is that Italian opera should have gone into such decline. Italy, after all, gave birth to bel canto, and is the homeland of Rossini, Bellini and Verdi. Yet the effervescent melodic line that began with Monteverdi during the Renaissance exhausted itself with the death of Giacomo Puccini in 1924, and has been only fitfully revived by such contemporary figures as the late Luigi Dallapiccola. There is, it seems, a lost generation of Italian opera composers. But what happened to them?

Last week the Metropolitan Opera offered a few clues as it staged a new production of Riccardo Zandonai's hot-blooded thriller Francesca da Rimini. First performed in 1914, Francesca was one of a number of works that attempted to transcend romantically the naturalistic action of verismo, using the more advanced harmonic language and orchestral technique of Wagner to create a new direction for opera. In La Fanciulla del West (1910), Puccini had pointed the way, and several younger men were eager to inherit his mantle: Italo Montemezzi, with L'Amore del Tre Re (1913); Ildebrando Pizzetti, with Fedra (1915); and Zandonai. But the attempt failed; although all three continued to compose into the midcentury, it was left to Puccini to write fine to traditional Italian opera with Turandot, which premiered posthumously in 1926.

Zandonai's failure was primarily due to the lack of a strong individual style. For all its harmonic piquancies and orchestral sleight of hand, the score of Francesca sounds derivative--a touch of Puccini, a sprinkle of Debussy, a pinch of Wagner. Further, it lacks a single memorable melody, the essential ingredient that keeps a relic like Francesco Cilea's Adriana Lecouvreur on the boards. Its plot, however, is operatic gold. Based on a play by Gabriele d'Annunzio, it recounts an episode from Dante's Inferno. Francesca (Soprano Renata Scotto) is tricked into marrying the deformed Gianciotto (Baritone Cornell MacNeil) when his handsome brother Paolo (Tenor Placido Domingo) comes courting in his place. Inevitably, though, wife and brother-in-law fall into an adulterous embrace and are discovered by Gianciotto, who murders them.

To its credit, the Met has given Francesca the full star treatment. Domingo is in top form, Scotto's kittenish acting is appropriate, even if her distressing vocal wobble is not, and MacNeil's fraying baritone sounds better than it has in years. Ezio Frigerio's sets evoke both the splendor and the asceticism of medieval Ravenna and Rimini, but Director Piero Faggioni compensates for the music's static quality by moving the cast around a bit too hectically. The second act, however, is spectacular. It depicts a ferocious battle between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, replete with whizzing crossbow arrows and hurtling fireballs. Conductor James Levine goes straight for the jugular, giving Francesco's high quotient of lust and mayhem its full due.

Despite the flaws, there is ample reason to stage a curiosity like Francesca. A steady diet of masterpieces serves to dull, rather than heighten, the appreciation of those qualities that set genius apart from talent. If more great composers were heard in historical context, the magnitude of their achievements might be more apparent. With its fiery plot and ripe score, Francesca makes for an invigorating evening in the opera house. Sometimes that is enough. --By Michael Walsh