GIORDANO: Fedora (La Scala, 1993) (NTSC)

Umberto Giordano
FEDORA

Mirella Freni
Placido Domingo

Coro ed Orchestra del Teatro alla Scala
Gianandrea Gavazzeni, conductor

Lamberto Puggelli, stage director

Recorded at the Teatro alla Scala, Milan, May 1993

Picture format: NTSC 4:3
Sound format: LPCM Stereo / Dolby Digital 5.1 / DTS 5.1
Region code: All Region
Subtitles: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish
Booklet notes: English, French, German
Running time: 113 mins
No. of DVDs: 1

• TDK presents Fedora, an opera by Umberto Giordano, an influential composer of Italian verismo style. The staging was much celebrated for its superlative cast with Mirella Freni in the title role and Placido Domingo as her opponent turned lover, viewed by many as the ideal proponents of these roles.
• This curious murder mystery takes its characters from Russia to Paris to Switzerland, letting the composer indulge in widely varied musical local colour and a sensational death scene. Fedora consists mostly of agitated conversation in a melodramatic plot that hinges on the composition and reception of ominous letters.
• The only 'aria' is the tenor showpiece in the second act, "Amor ti vieta", introduced with great flourish and leading to a stroke of musical genius, the heated exchange between Fedora and Loris sung to a Chopinesque piano accompaniment.
• This production created by Lamberto Puggelli for Mirella Freni at La Scala in 1993 became an enormous success, showing her as an operatic tragedienne with truly overwhelming vocal resources. Her unique ability to sum up a dramatic situation in a fraction of a second and her extraordinary gift for translating this situation into a vocal flood of contradictory emotions, ranging from fear and anger to hatred and resolve, is only rarely encountered in great operatic singing.