Fedora in the Frankfurt Opera, the 14th of May, 2022

I last heard as a concert version the opera ”Fedora” by the Italian composer Umberto Giordano in 2017 in St. Petersburg, so it was a good opportunity to see it now on stage in the Frankfurt Opera.

As a recap the story of the opera: Princess Fedora Romazov is getting married in St. Petersburg and on the eve of her wedding her intended is killed. The villain is assumed to be count Loris Ipanov, to whom Fedora swears revenge. Fedora and Loris meet in Paris, Loris falls in love with Fedora and confesses that he has killed her ex-fiancé, but swears that there is a good reason behind it all. Before he has time to present the evidence of this, Fedora manages to name him and his brother for the murder to the Russian authorities. When Loris later does prove that there was a steaming affair between the ex-fiancé and his wife and the ex-fiancé shot at him first and he only returned the fire, Fedora confesses her love for Loris. Later their happiness is smashed in Switzerland, when they are informed that Loris’s brother has died in prison and also their mother has died of grief. Fedora is devastated by remorse and when Loris find out that it is Fedora, who has caused his brother’s imprisonment, he is not ready to forgive her, but wants to kill her. Fedora, however, makes it first and swallows poison, which shatters Loris.

The director of the Frankfurt performance was Christof Loy, whose Salome enchanted me a couple of months ago in the Finnish National Opera. This time both set design and costume design were more traditional, but Loy informed about the happenings outside the main stage by videos and by using an additional small room behind the front stage. The videos unfortunately created some confusion in the sense that the leading lady had fallen ill, and they had not had time to shoot all the videos again, and therefore on occasion the Fedora on the stage and the Fedora on the video were a different person. But in the big picture both using the videos and the back space were successful solutions.

The opera itself is a bit dull. A couple of better-known arias, but mostly the music is rather ordinary and this direction did not raise it to master class.  

Svetlana Aksenova as Fedora was quite good, and so was Giorgio Berrugi as Loris Ipanov. The King Roger of the previous evening - Nicholas Brownlee – now sang the role of De Sirieux quite nicely. Anthony Robin Schneider also stood up in the small role of the coachman Cirillo.