VERDI : STIFFELIO

Radio New Zealand Concert network 
Sunday 21st of February 2010 at 3 - 6 pm
INTRODUCTION
BACKGROUND
COMPOSER
CHARACTERS
SYNOPSIS
 REVIEW
LIBRETTO (Italian) 

VERDI: Stiffelio, an opera in three acts
Adultery in the home of a Protestant minister
Stiffelio............................ José Cura
Lina................................. Julianna Di Giacomo
Stankar............................ Andrzej Dobber
Raffaele von Leuthold...... Michael Fabiano
Jorg................................. Phillip Ens
Dorotea........................... Jennifer Check
Federico.......................... Diego Torre
NY Metropolitan Opera/Plácido Domingo

This is a case of two operas for the price of one (three if you are really keen), but it is not a diptych (or a triptych). Stiffelio is a music drama (based on a French play, Le Pasteur) concerning a Protestant pastor early in the nineteenth century, who forgives his wife for her adultery with a young nobleman. In Catholic Italy in 1850, a married priest was unthinkable, so some opera houses performed it as Guglielmo Wellingrode, with the leading character a German minister of state in an earlier century. Verdi and the librettist Piave did not sanction this version, but they produced a new form of it set in England in the time of the Crusades, entitled Aroldo (Harold). Most people would not know either of them, but Stiffelio is the one that has gained credence and acceptance (since its orchestral score was rediscovered in the 1960s).

Stiffelio is a pastor in a Protestant sect (the so-called Assasvarians!), Aroldo is a Saxon knight (a tenor); the adulterous wife is Lina and Mina; her father is Stankar (!), an elderly colonel and count, or Egberto, an elderly knight (baritone); Raffaele (Raphael), the lady's lover, is a young nobleman, and his counterpart is Godvino (Godwin?), a knight (and a tenor, of course); Jorg (the basso), an elderly minister, is Briano, a holy man (how fitting!).

Notice that Raffaele von Leuthold is sung by Michael Fabiano (we saw him as one of the young hopefuls in The Audition, shown along with the series of NY Met operas in our cinemas).