Word: zandonai
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...stages Zandonai's Francesca da Rimini...
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...
...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...