VERDI : LUISA MILLER

Radio New Zealand Concert network
Sunday 11th of September 2016 at 6-8.35 pm
Sunday 13th of  September 2015 at 6 -8.40 pm
Sunday 13th of July 2008 at 3 - 5.30 pm

INTRODUCTION
SYNOPSIS
LIBRETTO (Italian)
LIBRETTO (English)
SCORE
2016
VERDI: Luisa Miller, an opera in three acts
Luisa Miller.................. Leah Crocetto
Rodolfo....................... Michael Fabiano
Miller........................... Vitaliy Bilyy
Count Walter............... Daniel Sumegi
Federica....................... Ekaterina Semenchuk
Wurm........................... Andrea Silvestrelli
Laura............................ Jacqueline Piccolino
Peasant......................... Christopher Jackson
San Francisco Opera Chorus & Orch/Nicola Luisotti
2015
VERDI: Luisa Miller, an opera in three acts
Miller........................... George Petean
Luisa............................ Nino Machaidze
Count Walter............... Tigran Martirossian
Rodolfo....................... Ivan Magrì
Federica, Duchess of Ostheim.... Christina Damian
Wurm........................... Oliver Zwarg
Laura............................ Ida Aldrian
Peasant......................... Daniel Todd
Hamburg State Opera Chorus & Orch/Simone Young
(recorded at the State Opera, Hamburg)
2008
VERDI: Luisa Miller, an opera in three acts
Count Walter............................... Ildar Abdrazakov
Rodolfo....................................... Ramón Vargas
Federica, Duchess of Ostheim...... Maria José Montiel
Wurm.......................................... Kwangchul Youn
Miller.......................................... Andrzej Dobber
Luisa........................................... Ana Maria Martínez
Laura.......................................... Elisa Cenni
Peasant....................................... Vincent Morell
Paris National Opera Chorus & Orch/Massimo Zanetti
(recorded in Opéra Bastille, Paris by Radio France)

 Luisa Miller is Verdi's Cinderella: neglected and underestimated. It has an overture that I do not immediately recognize; and I can not whistle a single song from it on demand. But there is one aria (Act 2.3) that we have often heard sung by Luciano Pavarotti and Placido Domingo (it has his name in the first line!): Quando le sere al placido chiaror d'un ciel stellato (When in the evenings in the placid glow of a starry sky); Rodolfo alias Carlo is looking back to good times when the lovers held hands, and she said 'I love you', but now that he has seen the letter (in which she was forced by Wurm to deny her love) he thinks she has betrayed him.
This is another of the German dramas of Friedrich Schiller (Ode to Joy) that found their way into the opera house: Rossini's William Tell and Verdi's Don Carlos are two that I devoured with excitement (but not complete understanding of the words or the characters) in the original language when I was sixteen. Others used by Verdi were The Robbers (I Masnadieri) and The Maid of Orleans (Giovanna d'Arco). The source for Luisa Miller (1849) was Kabale und Liebe (1783), 'Intrigue and Love', though this is better rendered as 'Love and Intrigue' in relation to to the libretto of Cammarano for Luisa Miller, as the original cabal was of politicians and aristocrats, whereas Verdi's setting is a Tyrolean village with the centre of power in the lord of the manor, not in the Prime Minister; and most of the cuts (in reducing five acts to three) were in the Kabale rather than the Liebe.

Of course it is just Romeo and Juliet again, with the two lovers poisoned at the very end, wishing they were not dying, and with enough energy left to kill the villain.

This was Verdi's fifteenth opera. Earlier successes were Nabucco, Ernani, and Macbeth, with Rigoletto and all the famous ones still to come.

I own one recording of it: a box of three black discs (RCA ), conductor Fausto Cleva, with Anna Moffo, Carlo Bergonzi, Cornell MacNeil, Shirley Verrett, Giorgio Tozzi, Ezio Flagello (Wurm). The Moffo was then hailed as the brilliant young American soprano who became the singing sensation of Italy, but by age 43 she was finished, and she died aged 73 in 2006. Overuse of the voice, I suppose. She herself said in 1977 that she was pushed too fast in the early stages, working too hard and traveling too much, always away, always alone, and feeling miserable. When operatic duty's to be done a soprano's lot is not a happy one.

Extinct Metropera files
COMPOSER
CHARACTERS
BACKGROUND
UNDERGROUND
ANALYSIS
SYNOPSIS
STORYLINE
LIBRETTO