Renée Fleming & Giordani sing Lucrezia Borgia Finale La Scala LIVE (1998) Era Desso

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Live at La Scala 1998
Lucrezia Borgia: Renée Fleming
Gennaro: Marcello Giordani
conductor: Roberto Rizzi Brignoli

This performance of the finale of Lucrezia Borgia is another astonishing document of Fleming's singing in the bel canto repertory. Here she is paired with one of her regular partners in this repertoire, Marcello Giordani (jumping in at the last moment to replace an indisposed Sabbatini) who matches her intensity in one of Donizetti's most inspired finales, full of fascinating orchestral effects and extremely taxing vocal demands that push the voices to extremes. Unlike in many other bel canto operas, the finale is not a mad scene and neither is the tenor the leading lady's lover: this is a recognition scene where Gennaro finds out that the Lucezia is his mother, and she realises she has accidentally poisoned him while trying to destroy her political enemies.

This account offers an embarrassment of riches: flawless support and resonance in all three registers, from the most glorious high notes to the richest, darkest chest voice imaginable; vocalising that spans the most sustained legato singing to the most extraordinary dramatic outbursts including huge plunges from top notes into raw chest voice taken up to F#4; gorgeous dynamic control and immaculate phrasing; incisive, heavy, and entirely unaspirated coloratura in the spectacular cabaletta, including a cadenza that goes from F6 down to Bb3 in a single span. To top it off we get some perfect trills from Fleming, some wonderfully risky variations in the second verse of the cabaletta, and beautiful improvisatory quality in the two artist's interactions with one another. Both artists make beautiful use of the Italian text, and are able to colour the text with a huge wealth of vocal colours.

The critical edition used corrects many of the mistaken performance traditions that had surrounded the piece from various editions and performers and provides a clearer picture of Donizetti's genius for atmosphere and drama. Just listen to those amazing sonorities at 1:00, and the imaginative vocal-orchestral textures from 8:30-9:45

This was a performance in the La Scala run that was famously booed on the opening night. A recording of that opening night performance complete with the booing can be found on youtube, but in very poor sound. You can judge for yourself whether the booing seems justified based on what you hear here!

In my opinion this is one the Fleming's three greatest Bel Canto roles, the others being her 1993 Armida (Rossini) and her 2002 Il Pirata (Bellini): one each of the famous bel canto masters. She sang many other roles in this repertoire very successfully also, but these are the most demanding, and the ones she remained most committed to. Here is her live 2002 Il Pirata Finale:    • Renée Fleming astonishing Il Pirata F...   and her live 1993 Armida Finale:    • Renée Fleming sings the Finale of Arm...  


Libretto: (Sadly the whole scene couldn't be posted in one video, so the recording starts a little way after the start of the scene. The libretto is too long to post here but can be found here

http://opera.stanford.edu/Donizetti/L...

starting on the line:

GENNARO (prende un coltello sulla tavola)
Fermo io sono.