Zandonai's Francesca da rimini

[Sean]

Mascagni without the good stuff- fills a gap in late romantic Italian opera with this disjoined effort.

[Superhorn]

  What do you mean by "good stuff " ?  I'm curious.
  I like Francesca Da Rimini ; it's in fact probably more sophisticated musically than Mascagni (at least what I know of his music),and perhaps
more of an aquired taste than Mascagni and Leoncavallo etc.
  The Met should revive its production from the 80s , originally with Domingo, Scotto and McNeil, conducted by Levine ,and which has been available on DVD.  I'm not sure about the casting for a revival,though.
  I have the Live Koch recording from the Bregenz festival in Austria with
Fabio Luisi conducting but no superstars in the cast. I can't recall their names offhand, but if you can find this CD , by all means get it.
  Perhaps Luis could conduct the revival ; he's quite busy this season at the Met.
   Idea for a revisionist production : Set it in the West Indies , in which case you would have to call the opera "Francesca da Bimini ".




                                                       

[Sean]

Thanks Super, though I didn't find much of a voice in this music, and rather haphazardly put together. You might compare it to post-Cavalieri Mascagni though...

[Wendell_E]

The Met should revive its production from the 80s , originally with Domingo, Scotto and McNeil, conducted by Levine ,and which has been available on DVD.  I'm not sure about the casting for a revival,though.

I've read that that production was destroyed, since they thought they'd never do it again, but according to the Future Seasons at the Met webpage, which usually has accurate info, they'll be doing it in 2012-2013 with Eva-Maria Westbroek and Marcello Giordani.  At one time it was listed as a new production, but not anymore, so maybe the old production wasn't destroyed after all.  I hope it wasn't, since it really was beautiful, and was probably pretty expensive.

[zamyrabyrd]

This event would be a candidate for the Guiness Book of Records, a near centenarian, one year short, Magda Oliviero singing "Datemi Pace" from Francesca da Rimini.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qQqsyPPRhM

She even speaks about it in the beginning of the clip. Great lady, and somehow she doesn't look 99 years old!!

ZB