|
Back
Lucrezia Pratt Rules Firenze
Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino
11/09/2025 - & November 11, 14, 16, 2025
Gaetano Donizetti: Lucrezia Borgia
Jessica Pratt (Lucrezia Borgia), Mirco Palazzi (Don Alfonso), René Barbera (Gennaro), Laura Verrecchia (Maffio Orsini), Daniele Falcone (Jeppo Liverotto), Gonzalo Godoy Sepulveda (Don Apostol Gazella), Davide Soddini (Ascanio Petrucci), Yaozhou Hou (Oloferno Vitellozzo), Mattia Denti (Gubetta), Antonio Mandrillo (Rustighello), Huigang Liu (Astolfo), Dielli Hoxha (Un coppiere)
Coro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Lorenzo Fratini (chorus master), Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Giampaolo Bisanti (conductor)
Andrea Bernard (stage direction), Alberto Beltrame (sets), Elena Beccaro (costumes), Marco Alba (lighting)
J. Pratt, R. Barbera (© Michele Monasta/Maggio Musicale Fiorentino)
Lucrezia Borgia, premiered in 1833, is considered by many as Donizetti’s best opera seria. Felice Romano’s excellent libretto is based on Victor Hugo’s Lucrèce Borgia, created earlier that same year. Hugo’s well‑written play certainly makes for an effective opera. Unusual for bel canto, Lucrezia Borgia has no love story. Rather, the central themes are friendship between Gennaro and Orsini, and the maternal love of Lucrezia for her son Gennaro. Rumored to have slept with her brother Cesare and her father Pope Alexander VI, the result of her incestuous relationship was her son Gennaro, entrusted to a fisherman and ignorant of his origins. Lucrezia keeps a discreet eye on her son, and this attention is mistaken for a love affair by her husband, Duke Alfonso d’Este of Ferrara.
When Gennaro and his friends deface the crest of the Borgias, removing the B and transforming the name to Orgia (orgy), Duke Alfonso’s henchmen apprehend him. Unaware it was her own son who defaced her family’s crest, Lucrezia demands revenge and is given a choice between killing the culprit by stabbing or poison. A first class poisoner herself, she opts for the latter, and when left alone with her dying son, she gives him the antidote and begs him to flee. Still intent on punishing Gennaro’s friends, she invites them under an assumed name, Princess Negroni, to a feast. Unfortunately, Gennaro did not flee but instead joined his friends at Negroni’s party. Having poisoned them with Sicilian wine, Lucrezia appears to her guests to triumphantly announce her revenge. She discovers her son in the group. Gennaro refuses her antidote as the quantity is insufficient for him as well as his friends. Furious, he attempts to kill her, but Lucrezia begs him not to commit matricide, thus revealing to him that he is a dreaded Borgia himself and that she is his mother. As Gennaro dies, the grief‑stricken mother stabs herself to death.
The plot is compact, dramatic and powerful. Unlike most bel canto dramas centered around impossible love, this one isn’t dominated by a romantic couple. There is balance between four principal characters: a dominant Lucrezia, loving mother but also wife of Ferrara’s duke and infamous intriguer; a cruel, jealous and domineering Duke of Ferrara; a brave but naive son, Gennaro, who ignores his origins; and a loving best friend, Orsini. This quartet bears all the qualities of the finest Italian operas (Il trovatore, Un ballo in maschera, Don Carlos, Aida, La forza del destino and La Gioconda), and it may extend to a quintet or a sextet of characters rather than the predictable loving couple of bel canto. This equilibrium was in fact Meyerbeer’s contribution to opera, and the essence of “Grand Opera”. It’s also a difficult and often expensive recipe, as its production requires four first‑rate singers. This is why Donizetti’s best opera is rarely performed. The recent successful TV series, The Borgias (2011‑14), has fortunately revived interest in the opera. Even in Italy, where it’s featured more than elsewhere, it’s not frequently mounted. Unbelievably, the last time it played Florence was in 1979, with Leyla Gencer and Katia Ricciarelli alternating as Lucrezia, with Alfredo Kraus as Gennaro.
In recent history, eminent Lucrezia Borgias have been Montserrat Caballé, Leyla Gencer and Joan Sutherland, while Kraus and Jaime Aragall have been leading Gennaros. Obviously, such heights are hard to attain; it’s easier to cast less demanding Donizetti operas, or ones demanding less star power. More recently, Australia’s Jessica Pratt and Russia’s Lidia Friedman, seen in the French version of Macbeth in the 2024 edition of Parma’s Verdi Festival, have been admired interpreters of the role. Its difficulty lies in its requirement of a dramatic coloratura with a facility in pianissimi (à la Caballé and Gencer) as well as bite (à la Gencer). This is yet another explanation for the paucity of its production.
Jessica Pratt was Florence’s Lucrezia Borgia and, for many, the main draw. The Australian singer enjoys a huge following among bel canto lovers, admired for the beauty of her voice, her facility in the upper register and her pianissimi. Given her country of birth, some call her the new Joan Sutherland, but make no mistake. Pratt is her own person and, unlike her predecessor, her Italian diction is impeccable. At the 2024 ROF at Pesaro, she triumphed in Bianca e Balliero, just as she had previously in Madrid’s La sonnambula.
Pratt truly owns the role of Lucrezia, and has no difficulty whatsoever with high notes or pianissimi. The Florentine public went crazy after every aria or duet. She impressed throughout, whether in solo arias or in duets with Gennaro or Alfonso. The most riveting moment was her final aria, “Era desso il mio figlio.” It’s to be noted that this aria was not in the original score. It was added by Donizetti at the insistence of Henriette Méric‑Lalande, the creator of the title role, as a bravura showpiece for demanding coloratura. The composer removed it for later performances. Today, it’s almost always performed, as it’s simply one of Donizetti’s finest arias.
When poet Felice Romano wrote its libretto, he had difficulty with Lucrezia’s complex personality as portrayed by Hugo: a cruel woman with a tender spot for her own son. Pratt, more than almost any other interpreter, managed to convey this thanks to her temperament. Fragility comes naturally to this singer. Through her tremendous vocal prowess and all‑consuming acting, she managed to inhabit the character’s tenderness as well as her vindictive nature. Some may have wished for more bite, though I find that in most cases, less is more. It would have been easy to depict a more overwhelming Lucrezia, but then the fragility needed in the final scene wouldn’t have been as credible.
In recent years, Mexican-American tenor René Barbera has blossomed from a timid young singer to a versatile actor, with impressive ease in the upper register. He’s equally at ease in comedy and tragedy, as he demonstrated as Nemorino in Turin’s L’elisir d’amore earlier this year, and in Adelaide di Borgogna, in Pesaro in 2023. Barbera’s voice is perfect for Gennaro, reminiscent of Giacomo Aragall: virile, yet youthful, endowed with a beautiful timbre and with complete ease in his upper register.
Directors often feel compelled to transform Gennaro’s friendship with Orsini into a homosexual love story. This works relatively well, as the principal male character Gennaro does not enjoy a female love interest in this work. Orsini is also outraged by Gennaro’s shine on Lucrezia, and warns him of her machinations, both utterly understandable, given Lucrezia’s antecedents.
Mezzo Laura Verrecchia was a good choice for the travesty role of Orsini, as her light mezzo has the right timbre for the role – not too feminine or too earthy. Moreover, her slim figure helped her in portraying a young man. In her posture, movements and demeanour, she was convincing. She elicited huge applause with her final act, “Il segreto per essere felici.” In addition to vocal bravura, Verrecchia managed to colour the last strophe of her aria with a different hue, reflecting the incipient effect of the poisoned wine.
Italian bass Mirco Palazzi, heard as the tutor in Chicago’s Le Comte Ory in 2022 and Leporello in Turin’s Don Giovanni in 2018, does not have the vocal stature of the Duke of Ferrara, who should sound menacing and ruthless. Palazzi’s timbre is appropriate for less sombre characters, such as Leporello and Don Basilio in Il barbiere di Siviglia. He did try to darken his voice and to act intimidating, but given his small physical stature, he merely sounded frustrated.
Conductor Giampaolo Bisanti, last admired in a brilliantly directed Benvenuto Cellini in Dresden in 2024, is known for his excellence in both French opera and bel canto, as he’s again proved with this production. The ensemble pieces were spirited, and in the difficult passages for Lucrezia (there are several), Bisanti provided ample support. The last production of Lucrezia Borgia that I experienced was five years ago in Trieste, also staged by Andrea Bernard. A collaborator with one of today’s most creative opera’s directors, Damiano Michieletto; their co‑stagings of Il barbiere di Siviglia in Florence in 2022 and Rossini’s Otello in Frankfurt in 2024 were strong and original. However, his 2023 solo staging of Ernani in Valencia was dull and uninspired.
Usually, when directors redo a staging, they improve, as they learn from their mistakes. Alas, in this case, it got worse – much worse. The same ideas used in Trieste remained but the bad ones seem to have festered. Bernard rightly sees the link between this tragedy and the fact that Lucrezia’s illegitimate child and product of incest was taken away from her at birth. So, we are shown tableaux from the past throughout the opera. The opening showed young Lucrezia with two nuns who eventually steal her child. Of course, this goes against the libretto, where it’s clear Lucrezia has given away the child, to be brought up by a fisherman in Naples, as Gennaro recounts in his first act duet with Lucrezia, “Di pescatore ignobile”. Also cited in that duet, she kept in touch with Gennaro through letters and assured his career in the Venetian army. Nonetheless, the trauma of giving up her baby is indeed at the centre of the opera.
Whereas the 2020 Trieste production was cradle-obsessed, here they are still ever‑present, but hard to decipher for those not acquainted with the older production. In several scenes, we witness mysteriously overturned cradles. As the crib imagery persists, albeit in a reduced fashion, the Catholic Church becomes the new leitmotif. It’s true that Lucrezia was the illegitimate daughter of the Borgia Pope, Alessandro VI (1431‑1503), but Lucrezia herself was neither Abbess nor nun.
Bernard changed the era from the sixteenth century to Fascist Italy. Gennaro and his friends are partisans, while Lucrezia and her noble husband Alfonso d’Este are the Fascist rulers of Ferrara. Instead of secret police and spies, all evil characters are clergymen. Bernard seems to mistake Mussolini’s Italy with Franco’s Spain. Compounding this confused incoherency, the libretto’s references contradict Bernard’s twisted ideas.
For Bernard, hating the Catholic Church has become the opera’s central theme. Sadly, this is not merely an annoyance; it greatly weakens it.
Act II opens to Alfonso d’Este praying in the Borgia chapel. If d’Este ruled Ferrara, the noble residence of the Duke would pray in a family chapel, not a Borgia chapel. Gennaro and his friends enter the chapel and desecrate it by jumping on the altar and breaking chalices, crosses and madonnas. It appeared more akin to Cromwell’s army than underground partisans. In the libretto, Gennaro removes the letter B from the Borgia inscription on the wall of the palace. In Bernard’s production, it’s from the altar in the Borgia chapel.
Act III opens with the semi-nude Alessandro V, Lucrezia’s father, who is not in the opera, on a marble slab getting a massage, acupuncture and God knows what else. The Cardinals, dressed in red, enter and kiss his ring. Why would Rome’s cardinals be in Ferrara and what is the Pope doing there? It’s just sensationalism, an unimaginative ploy of Bernard’s, desperate to shock.
Yet again, Bernard attempts to surprise with the often‑seen trope of Gennaro and Orsini as lovers. However, as the public have been subjected to shock therapy from the start, this has little effect. In Act III, the two men engage twice in what appear to be French kisses, before escaping from Alfonso’s goons/cardinals.
Despite the absurd staging, this was a vocally thrilling performance, thanks to Pratt and Barbera. How unfortunate that these two terrific voices must be associated with the tediously lurid ideas of Andrea Bernard. This fabulous, enduring opera doesn’t require modification.
Ossama el Naggar
|
