This time through, I found myself quite caught up in Adriana’s melodic fragrance, and in  frequent admiration of the craftsmanship that keeps the convolutions of the libretto, which are often obscure and not always above triviality, perking along. In this opera we encounter in an almost insanely elaborated form the same problem I’ve noted in other pieces from this period (Fanciulla, Suor Angelica)—the effort to establish in some detail a work’s time-and-place milieu in a way that tends to clog up the plot without providing any occasion for memorable music.  Riffling for my own edification through the references I have in hand, I found both amusement and bemusement in following the twists and turns of Peggie Cochrane’s unraveling of all this in her notes and translation that accompany the 1961 Decca/London recording of Adriana, which stars Tebaldi and Del Monaco. (Her essay also served to remind me of the genuine riches that are occasionally to be found in such materials. This is by far the most informative of the sources [all secondary] I have come across on the subject. I don’t know if it survived in post-LP release.)

So, with full credit to Ms. Cochrane: there were evidently three versions of Arturo Colautti’s  libretto, made as he labored to fashion a workable opera text from the five-act 1849 drama of Scribe and Legouvé. The one finally set by Cilèa and published by Sonzogno eliminated a great deal of material from the earlier versions and from the play, material that would further have fouled the musical works, but which also clarified many of the historical, political, social, and theatrical references to a stage life being led some 120 years before that of the play’s original audiences, and over 170 years before the opera’s. To these we can add the generous sprinkling of ancient historical and mythological references, some by way of the French classical dramas of Racine and Corneille, with which those audiences had a cultural familiarity, but ours less so. Thus, among the cross-referenced layers of the story drawn from the real-life relationship between the noted actress Adrienne le Couvreur and Maurice, Count of Saxony; from the play’s free, dramatically convenient interpretation of it and its political and military context; and from the professional and amorous intrigues among the personnel of the Comédie Française, c. 1730—again based on real-life personages but re-imagined—Colautti apparently first explained it all, then redacted much, and any of us actually trying to connect the dots will find him- or herself with many dangling loose ends, which Cochrane does her considerable best to tie up.

In performance, though, these confusions matter less than it seems they should, for Cilèa quite ingeniously wraps them up into ensembles or pushes them along in fleetly set dialogue. We get the idea of the social atmosphere, and derive some specifics from the physical acting as we go along, and I doubt that any but the most alert and informed Italian receptors would bother to ask, “Wait—what was that about a necklace? What necklace?” Granted, we’re not listening to ensemble writing at the level of Falstaff or Le Nozze di Figaro, but it’s cheerful enough, and if we’re not too inquisitive we soon find ourselves at another of the haunting little arias or feverish duets, all very shrewdly written to accommodate voices of Verdian format without requiring the best of Verdian technique. And amid all the distractions of the libretto, Cilèa keeps the focus pretty well on the central story, which, it satisfies me to be able to point out, is just another late-ish take on the central E-19 narrative: an imperiled and dispossessed male protagonist (Count Maurizio is the son of the King of Poland, dashing and ambitious, but also illegitimate and thus barred from the royal succession and surrounded by powerful political enemies) must seek to secure his position through alliance with, or, at the least, courtly attentions to, an influential woman. Whatever the importance of other elements—two women, one whom he truly loves while the other holds the power, a common complication—and wherever our emotional attachment lies (with Adriana), that’s what makes the story happen.