The primary reason the role of Adriana is coveted by sopranos running up against shelf date (like Ponselle, like Maria Caniglia at war’s end, like Scotto and Freni later) is that its reach at the top is limited (a few A-naturals and a couple of B-flats, none problematic in approach, will do the trick), and a great deal of the writing can be made effective through control of softer dynamics in the midrange. To make that vivid in the theatre, though, to keep us hanging with the emotional life shrewdly inscribed in it by Cilèa, is far from a sure thing, and in her way (by which I mean, with a midsized voice and word formations partaking more of the oscura than of the chiaro, in Modern Russian manner) Netrebko succeeded. At the beginning there were traces of the clotted vowels and unstable tones that so compromised her Tosca, but they were minimal and soon gone. She sustained the line consistently well in a predominantly restrained mode, recognized the important effects as they came along, and usually found the means to make them. Her low range evinced a stronger chest blend and deeper position than I’ve heard from her in the past. It was a pleasure to hear her sounding fresher, in a part that fits her well now.

Netrebko’s adoption of a role we have been associating with bigger lyrico-spinto or even dramatic soprano voices re-awakened my curiosity about the part’s spotty vocal tradition. So I decided to listen to a few recordings of the two famous solos, most of which I had once been familiar with, but had not heard for so long that they held an element of rediscovery. I had some surety that the evolutionary line of Italianate soprano vocality would run in the same general line I had marked with the role of Norma (see the posts of Nov. 10 and 24, 2017), but whose course here would run through a different stylistic context. The first of these solos is the opera’s most famous number, Adriana’s entrance aria, “Io son l’umile ancella.” We so often hear the piece in isolation that it is useful to recall its context. Adriana is about to go onstage in the role of Roxanne in Racine’s Bajazet, and she’s going over some lines. Displeased, she repeats them to more forceful effect, and when this elicits flattery from the Prince and the Abbé, she reproves them—”Too much, sirs. Listen: I scarcely breathe”—and then, having captured their attention in the manner of a magnetic performer, she begins the aria. Colautti set this succinctly, in three sets of rhyming couplets, and to do it justice in English would require the time and close attention of a master poet/translator. So I will paraphrase freely, conveying what I take to be the gist of Adriana’s words:  “I am the humble servant of the creator’s genius. He offers me the words, and I send them out into people’s hearts. I am the accent on the verse, the echo of the human drama, the fragile instrument that obeys the hand . . . Meek, joyful, or cruel, I am ever faithful. My voice is but a breath, a breath that with the new day will die . . .”