Adrienne’s own real-life story, complete with an early death whose cause left ample room for dramatic invention, was a natural subject for the mid-Ottocento French theatre. Its title role was a coveted star vehicle for three-quarters of a century, and its performance lineage, most easily traced from Rachel to Bernhardt to Duse, is a handy sketch of the evolution of acting styles over that span. It was for Rachel that Scribe and Legouvé wrote the play. But she, who after the death of Talma had carried the torch of classical tragedy as the rising seas of Romantic drama threatened to extinguish it, at first pleaded with the elders of the Comédie to leave it unproduced. Although known, as Adrienne herself had been in her time, for bringing a personal tone to her interpretations of the classical heroines, Rachel apparently worried that she would alienate her audience by appearing in a play that loosened the rules of classical structure and declamation. Once she gave in, the part became one of her great triumphs. So it was then for Bernhardt, who brought the full range of Romantic theatricality and beguilement to anything she did, and for many other prominent actresses of her time. It was also a popular role for Duse, who retained it even after she had for the most part moved beyond Scribe and Sardou, and who sometimes performed the final act of Adrienne, with its famous Death Scene, at benefits and gala evenings.

The time of Bernhardt’s and Duse’s dueling, overlapping reigns was the last of the play’s currency, and with Duse’s claim we can say that the role of Adrienne, which had begun life in the hands of a great French Classical actress, had been gathered toward the end into those of an Italian verista—or, at the least, of an actress who had brought the Romantic temperament into the Modern Acting Sensibility. And that is exactly where the life of the operatic Adriana began. (I haven’t pinned down exact dates, but it would not surprise me to find that in 1902, as Angelina Pandolfini, Caruso, and de Luca were singing the premiere of Adriana at the Teatro Lirico in Milan, Sarah & Co. and/or Eleonora & Co. were acting Adrienne somewhere.) So we would expect that the performing tradition of this coveted role started with sopranos whose vocal and stylistic profiles were grounded in the emergent squarcio di vita habits of what was then the Next Gen, but were also reflective of late Italian Romantic influences and at least traces of a Classical discipline. As noted above, that tradition was, if not broken, then interrupted. But the role has been proven to be one that can respond to a range of voices and temperaments, provided only that some sort of theatrical charisma be in evidence, and before I do a little highly selective tracing of former exemplars, I should enter some words about our present one.

Among any areas of concern we might have entertained concerning Anna Netrebko, theatrical charisma has never been one—that’s been before us for twenty years. And it’s not limited to a generalized personal glamor; she can actually act. While her public, social, promotional self (extending, from all reports, to her recital persona) has become exactly the sort of blingy, Fabricated-Prima-Donna creature that ought not be allowed to roam at large as a living emblem of serious art, this entity has not yet invaded her stage work with the sort of pandering appeals sometimes resorted to by special artists starting to worry about their cultural place in the world. Between the lines, she still plays the game for real. Thus, while neither her voice nor that of her tenor partner, Piotr Beczala, had quite the full-throated freedom to grab us by the throat as the reprise of “No, più nobile” mounted upward in Act IV, and though the playing circumstances were unnecessarily compromised by a production decision (see below), her commitment and magnetism still gave us a moving Death Scene.