Umberto Giordano - Fedora (2004) [DVD9 NTSC]


Mirella Freni, Placido Domingo, Umberto Giordano, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Roberto Abbado
Format: Multiple Formats, AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, NTSC, Subtitled
Language: Italian (Dolby Digital 5.1), Italian (DTS 5.1), Italian (PCM Stereo)
Subtitles: Chinese, English, French, German, Spanish
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Number of discs: 1
Studio: Deutsche Grammophon
DVD Release Date: September 14, 2004


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This 1997 Metropolitan Opera production of Mascagni's opera conducted by Roberto Abbado, stars Mirella Freni, Placido Domingo, Ainhoa Arteta, Dwayne Croft, and Jean-Yves Thibaudet. Features include superb picture quality, improved audio quality and two S

In the MET production of Giordano's Fedora from 1997 long time MET and international favourite soprano Mirella Freni reconquered New York as a glamorous Russian princess involved with a dashing aristocratic spy (the wildly cheered Placido Domingo, triumphing in a part Enrico Caruso created). Roberto Abbado conducts.

Beppe de Tomasi's production is wonderfully theatrical. It is well served by Ferruccio Villagrossi's appropriately period-specific designs, with their opulent representation of belle epoque high society.

Mirella Freni did not disappoint either her audience or the critics, who were unanimous in their praise for her dramatic authority and the power, warmth and brilliance of her voice. Regal epithets were in the air, and the partnership of Freni and Domingo was described as "operatic royalty". Freni made her stage debut as Micaela in Carmen in 1955. Here she is on the Met stage more than 40 years later, her incomparable, securely supported voice intact, a tribute to the care she has taken with it and her choice of repertoire over the years.

Placido Domingo has repeatedly declared the role of Loris Ipanov to be among his favourites. Loris has barely appeared on stage when he is asked to sing the most famous number in the score, the show-stopping aria "Amor ti vieta"; during the first run, the New York critic for the British Opera magazine found this and the similarly brief aria "Vedi, io piango" from later in the act "almost worth the price of admission in themselves."

The sparring partners, diplomat De Siriex and the flirtatious Countess Olga Sukarov, are played by the baritone Dwayne Croft and the Basque soprano Ainhoa Arteta. In their sequence of verbal jousting, Croft's suavely sung "La donna russa" is matched by Olga's frequently cut song comparing French men to champagne. By the third act they seem ready to settle their differences, after the revelation that Olga's Polish pianist protege was a spy (although we knew all along that he was Jean-Yves Thibaudet, making a voiceless Met debut).

Fedora is the fifth project of the expanded collaboration between Deutsche Grammophon and The Metropolitan Opera. The features of DGG's state-of-the art DVD-Video releases include superb picture quality and improved audio quality with two surround sound options: PCM Stereo PCM and DTS 5.1 + Dolby Digital 5.1 surround.


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