Adriana Lecouvreur in the new Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, the 6th of May, 2018

The second opera of my St. Petersburg weekend was Francesco Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur in the new Mariinsky Theatre. This is Cilea’s best known opera and the story is likely one of the most complicated in the history of operas. If we leave only the three main characters in the story, it can be simplified to a love triangle, where Adriana loves Maurice, who is also the object of love of Princess de Bouillon. Maurice no longer loves the Princess, but has started a relationship with Adriana. Adriana gives Maurice as a gift some violets and Maurice gives them further to the Princess. Adriana and the Princess are jealous of each other and the Princess sends the faded violets to Adriana and she both smells and kisses them. The flowers are poisoned and Adriana dies just when Maurice comes to propose to her. So this is a hugely simplified version of the story line. The full story contains lots of other people and more one-sided love.

After previous evening’s Samson and Delilah this opera felt rather ordinary. The direction combined traditional costume drama to modern technique (each act started with video clips explaining the background of the story). Costume design (Christian Gasc) was great. The flower vase headgear in the ballroom scene and the dance scene with its crocodile (I assume it was a crocodile) were impressive. Out of the main soloists, Akhmed Agadi, who sang the role of Maurice, sounded sometimes – but only sometimes- quite good. The best performances of the evening were given by Tatiana Pavlovskaya in the role of Adriana and Natalia Yevstafieva in the role of Princess de Bouillon. Both have really strong voices and when they clashed with each other on the stage, it was truly impressive. These women rocked! Though I do have to say that all the performers need more work on Italian pronounciation.  Again it was difficult to say in which language they were singing.